


Bad Form

by scordeteyla



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Car Accident, Character Study, Closeted Character, Death Wish, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Gun Violence, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Interior monologue, Morally Ambiguous Character, Mutilation, Some humour, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Crush, Villain Protagonist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-12-08 12:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 64,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11646189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scordeteyla/pseuds/scordeteyla
Summary: The story of what turned Killian Jones into Captain Hook, how he came to Storybrooke, and what happened until he returned to Neverland.aka the story of Ouat season 2 with a lot of focus on the character Captain Hook.‘What’s the name of the place we’re headed, captain?’Jones didn’t respond right away. He picked up a hook and fitted it into the slot on the contraption over the stump where his left hand used to be. They heard a satisfying click when it locked in place. Then he grabbed the helm with his hand.‘Neverland!’ he said, grinning at Smee with a mad look on his face, baring his big white teeth.He spun the wheel hard around to port, and the ship headed straight for the howling abyss, which might turn out to be the beginning of a new life or the end of William Smee and everyone else on the Jolly Roger.





	1. The Crocodile's Wrath

**Author's Note:**

> If all that sounds familiar, that's on purpose. The real difference is what's going on inside the characters' heads.  
> I really hope you like it. Please, tell me what you think.  
> This is my first ever fanfiction.
> 
> Most of what is told in this text, is what happens to Hook during the second season of Once Upon a Time. It will be posted in different chapters; the first one is almost exclusively inspired by the episode "The crocodile" with my own interpretation of the characters' intrinsic motivations. There are a few parts that are not on the show and as the story progesses, there will be more of that.
> 
> Also, please excuse the mistakes; English is really not my first language.

**1**

It was dark and stuffy inside the bar. The air was full of the smells from the street, the village, but somehow stronger, more condensed. Except for the smell of rum, that was not really prevalent outside. To Rumple the air looked somewhat misty because of it, the fumes making him hazy, tired. He had never been much of a drinker before, but since Bae had been born, he had not even drunk a drop of mead.

At the other side of the bar, there was a group of men sitting around a table playing a game of dice. The only woman among the rum-sodden pirates was winning. She was not a pirate, but she looked comfortable with them, not the least bit afraid, no, as though she were one of them.

Rumple knew better, but he still was nervous to address her, like a stranger.

‘Milah! Milah, it’s time to go.’

She looked at him and sighed. The men around her focused on him as well. It was enough to make him quail, but Milah answered so derisively it tore at his heart.

‘Good, so go.’

The man sitting across from her, far younger than the rest, but also better groomed, the most arrogant-looking one, jerked his head in Rumple’s direction without really looking at him.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked Milah in a light but indifferent tone. Rumple was nothing but a diversion to him.

‘Ah, it’s no one,’ she said, pouring herself another cup of mead or wine. The look she threw him was one of disgust. ‘It’s just my husband.’

‘Oh,’ the young man said, turning his full attention towards Rumple, grinning up at him with impish glee. ‘Well, he’s a tad taller than you described.’

Everyone laughed at this quip, including Milah who snorted into her drink. Rumple found himself curiously happy that Milah had mentioned him to those strangers at all. She had not forgotten him. That she treated him with disdain because of his height, didn’t hurt so much then.

‘Please,’ he said to her. ‘You have responsibilities.’

‘You mean like being a man and fighting in the ogre wars?’ asked Milah scathingly, her humor gone in a flash. ‘Other wives became honored widows while I became lashed to the village coward.’ She turned to pour herself yet another drink. ‘I need a break. Run home, Rumple. It’s what you’re good at.’

She grimaced at him and downed her cup. She had to be quite drunk already. Rumple was almost ready to give up, when from behind him came a tiny voice.

‘Mama?’

He turned to see Baelfire standing there.

‘Bae,’ he said, putting his hand protectively on the boy’s shoulder. The child stared imploringly at his mother. ‘You were supposed to wait outside, son.’

Milah became very quiet. Without another word, she got up and walked over to them. Rumple wasn’t quite sure whether the sight of Bae had swayed her or the fear of shame in front of the pirates, her new friends. Neither of the men made a move to stop her, but Rumple could see a look in the young man’s ice-blue stare that send shivers down his spine. He was glad to leave them without any further trouble.

*

Trouble appeared the following week with an urgent knock on Rumple’s door. Adeline, Milah’s best friend since childhood, stood out the front when he answered.

He didn’t even get a chance to wish her a good morning, when she blurted out, ‘Rumplestiltskin, you need to get to the docks now.’

‘The docks, why?’

‘The men who came into port last week… they've taken Milah. They’re setting sail. You must hurry.’

Rumple felt his knees go weak. He closed the door without thanking Adeline. In his mind’s eye he remembered the drunken pirates, especially one of them. The predatory gleam in the young pirate’s eyes as they followed Milah leaving the bar. She had not seen it, she could not know.

She had promised Rumple to stay, to be there for Bae at the very least. And she had kept that promise. She had not come home so late again. She had almost been a loving wife again, like she’d been before.

And now those monsters had taken her, captured her. The thought of what they might do to her, gave an unknown courage to Rumplestiltskin. He grabbed his cane and made for the docks.

*

Killian saw the man limping towards his ship from afar. He remembered him. That was Milah’s husband, the village coward. A sliver of a man, ragged like a beggar, cowed by misery, hardship, and deference, limping because he chose that fate. Though he was far older than him, he lacked any kind of authority. He was a joke, a sad joke.

When he stepped onto the deck, he stumbled and fell at Killian’s feet. Before Killian could even decide whether to bother helping him up, the quartermaster spoke up in an imperious tone.

‘On your feet for the captain!’

It sounded like Killian was some sort of a figure of great respect, and he liked it rather, being who he was, what he’d been, and what he’d likely never be.

John and Gall grabbed Rumplestiltskin by the shoulders and raised him roughly to his feet, shoving his walking stick back into his trembling hands. He looked up at Killian, and the fear was even more prominent now.

‘I… I remember you, fr… from the bar,’ he said, pointing excitedly up at him, a look of familiarity on his gaunt face now, as though Killian might be on his side.

Well, he might be, he would not deny that outright, but first he needed to see who that man was. So far, not really much to see.

‘It’s always nice to make an impression,’ said Killian with a smirk.

His men were laughing. For a moment, Killian relished in their adoration, in the other man’s nervous despair. He was the one who had stolen his wife. Nobody liked being the cuckolded, but something about the man’s behaviour made it appear as if he was the one who’d done wrong. As though he came here, asking lenience for some kind of transgression. Well, far be it from him, Killian, to divert him from that notion. He may be a tall man, but not overly big, and if another woman’s husband, burlier than Rumplestiltskin, came to him like this, he might be a tad worried. No, not scared, certainly not trying to avoid a confrontation, but wary at least. This man, however, was not really someone to be worried about. Killian enjoyed the dark power the man’s lack of confidence gave him.

He threw up his arms in mock dismay. ‘Where are my manners? We haven’t been formerly introduced. Killian Jones.’

The other man said nothing. Maybe he assumed Killian knew who he was, which was true of course, but still, the lack of manners irked him somewhat. Maybe he just didn’t know what to say.

‘Now, what are you doing aboard my ship?’

‘Well,’ the man said, turning around as though looking for someone – Killian had a good idea for whom – and added in a whisper as though ashamed of having to admit it. ‘You have my wife.’

‘I’ve had many a man’s wife,’ Killian said flippantly.

Rumplestiltskin did not seem deterred by the other men’s laughter this time.

‘No, you… you see, we… we have a son, and he needs his mother.’

Killian came towards the small man now, keeping up a façade of cordiality he no longer felt.

‘And see, I have a ship full of men who need… companionship.’

More laughter. Killian hoped Milah would never hear of the words he had spoken here. She had specifically asked only for him to be there for her. Oh, and even if she heard of them, she’d know it had only been a jest. He was not that kind of a man who would ever force himself or allow others to force themselves upon anyone who wasn’t willing.

‘I… I'm begging you. Please let her go,’ the man said beseechingly, again with that familiarity.

Killian looked him in the eyes.

‘I'm not much for bartering,’ he said softly, only to Rumplestiltskin and in all honesty.

‘That said,’ he added loudly and walked back to the mast. ‘I do consider myself an honourable man, a man with a code. So… if you truly want your wife back…’ Rumplestiltskin nodded eagerly, and Killian pulled out one of the swords hanging from the mast and threw it at the other man’s feet, ‘… all you have to do is take her.’

He unsheathed his own sword and pointed it at the man who looked at him, terrified, like a cornered rabbit.

‘Never been in a duel before, I take it? Well, it’s quite simple, really. The pointy end goes in the other guy.’

The man looked anywhere but at him.

‘Go on,’ Killian said threateningly. ‘Pick it up.’

He noticed how he got genuinely angry at him, for his passiveness, his spinelessness, his feebleness. Older men than him had mostly taken off, been abusive, or died an untimely death, not many great mentors for Killian to go around. The man standing quivering in front of him was a paramount example of the cowards in his life. Not to fight when it is needed to save his people from the ogres. Not even willing to take a risk for the woman he supposedly loved. Milah had told him she hated her husband now, because of a bargain he had made about a year before, had said she loved him, Killian, instead and wanted to leave with him despite the son, the only reason why she hadn’t left sooner. She had said that Rumple was at least a good father to Bae, far better than she fared as his mother. Killian didn’t like that part of the deal at all really. But she was very pretty and headstrong, and he liked them both pretty and headstrong.

As Killian put the blade against the side of Rumplestiltskin’s neck, he looked like he was going to weep or maybe even wet his trousers. Was he about to allow him to kill him just like that? Leave his son mother- and fatherless?

But he wasn’t going to kill him anyway. Why should he? He could just as easily defeat Rumplestiltskin now, disarm him. The humiliation would be enough to sate the bloodlust. He wouldn’t have a boy lose both his parents in one day. Or maybe he would even tell Milah to bugger off after all, if the fancy took him, if that man would just pick up the bloody sword.

But he wouldn’t.

‘A man unwilling to fight for what he wants,’ said Killian, his voice dark with anger, his eyes boring into the other man’s, ‘deserves what he gets.’

As he turned away, he heard the man make a squeaking sound, like a mouse being trodden on.

‘Please, sir,’ he said.

If Killian hadn’t been so furious, he might have liked the way he addressed him, with a kind of respect he rarely thought he deserved. Now he felt he earned it, at least from that snivelling bag of scum.

‘What am I gonna tell my boy?’

‘Try the truth,’ Killian said coldly, still looking into the man’s eyes that now were shiny with his unshed tears. ‘His father’s a coward.’ Like mine, he added in his head, turned his back on him, and walked up the stairs to the helm.

He heard him leaving after a while and watched Rumplestiltskin hobble across the docks away from the ship, feeling slightly guilty, but more pleased with what had transpired. Maybe this father would not abandon his son at least, even if he was nothing more than a bloody coward.

 

**2**

The only comfort he got from meeting in this dark place, was that it was still daytime outside and the level of noise here offered the privacy he had been hoping for, as well as some form of protection from the creature he was about to meet because it meant the place was packed. The Dark One was sitting alone at a table behind a separating wall. From there he remained mostly unseen to the rest of the bar, but still could keep an eye on the entrance. He wasn’t drinking anything. Maybe he didn’t need to, required no sustenance because he was no longer a man. Instead he was peeling the shells off some peanuts without eating them. What he did might have looked like an unconscious act, but he kept his eyes fixed on the nuts in a way that made Smee wonder if he thought about some victims he had skinned or was planning to.

He walked up to the Dark One, fascinated by the sight.

‘It really is you,’ he said in awe and sat down across from him without waiting to be invited. ‘The Dark One, in the flesh. Or…’ he gestured at the other, ‘whatever that is.’

The Dark One had a golden hue to his skin, maybe it wasn’t really skin, maybe he didn’t have flesh, bones, certainly not a heart. He didn’t look up from his task with the peanuts, but instead said promptly, ‘You've gone to a lot of trouble to meet me. You better hope I agree it’s worth… my… time.’

He put an emphasis on the last three words, not leaving any doubt for Smee what would happen if he disagreed.

Smee nearly fell over himself to answer.

‘I’ve heard you’ve been looking for something, and as luck would have it, I’m a man who trades in hard-to-find objects,’ he said without taking breath.

The barmaid approached and brought him his mead. Smee shielded his mouth with one hand to make sure nobody except the Dark One could hear him now.

‘Like a bean. A magic bean that can transport you between worlds.’

Suddenly the peanuts were forgotten. The Dark One slowly raised his head to look Smee fully in the face. Smee really wished he wouldn’t. The Dark One might mostly look like a man, but his eyes, oh, his eyes were a completely different matter; like from a reptile, bronze-green and larger than natural, hardly any whites visible.

He leant towards Smee.

‘I’ve been told,’ he said, ‘they no longer exist in this land.’

‘Not in this land, no,’ Smee agreed excitedly, glad he had finally gained his attention. ‘But the ships that dock here often return from far off lands with treasures they don’t always understand.’

‘But you do,’ the Dark One said. His voice took on a scathing, mocking tone, like a child, a mean child. It was no less unnerving.

‘It’s my job, as is knowing the rumours of who might pay the highest price for said treasures,’ he added with a smug smile.

‘And what rrrrumours could they be?’ the other asked, not dropping his contemptuous air.

Clearly he didn’t think Smee would know anything of value, so Smee hastened to prove him wrong.

‘That you were once a great coward but that you became the Dark One to overcome that and protect a- a son who you lost despite all…’

Suddenly his throat constricted as if a fist had closed around it, but nobody was touching him. The only thing he saw was the Dark One holding his hand up towards him like a claw, like he was the one choking him. And that was what he was doing of course, only by magic. Oh, the mighty power of the Dark One, Smee thought and had no time wondering if that was it for him.

‘It’s not nice to spread rumours!’ the Dark One shouted. His tone was distractingly genial, but of course he didn’t really mean it.

Smee knew he had gone too far.

‘A bean!’ the Dark One exclaimed. ‘Where… is… it?’ he asked threateningly.

‘I don’t have it,’ Smee managed to choke out. ‘But I can get it. I- I swear.’

The Dark One released him, and Smee felt lovely wonderful air streaming back into his lungs. It didn’t matter that it was actually quite foul. He coughed.

As he looked up, he noticed the Dark One was still fixating him with his eerie gaze.

‘You haven’t heard my price,’ he said quickly.

‘I spin straw into gold. Price shouldn’t be a problem.’

The Dark One sounded simultaneously bored and impatient with him. But since he seemed to like the nature of the deal, Smee thought it was worth his time after all.

‘I don’t want money,’ he said happily, eager to get to the point. ‘I want eternal life.’

The Dark One broke out in a cackle.

‘Only the Dark One has life eternal.’

Smee felt disconcerted. The Dark One slapped him on the wrist.

‘Tell you what, my son,’ he said friendly. Still taunting, but more sincere than before. He seemed to really want to make good on the deal. ‘What I can do… what about youth? Spin the clock back… till you’re a little boy again.’

Smee thought about it only for a second.

‘Close enough,’ he said smiling, feeling like he was that little boy already. ‘Deal.’

‘But remember,’ the Dark One cried, ‘you fail to deliver, I spin the clock forward and turn you into dust.’

Smee thought it was time for him to leave. He stood up.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said hastily and excused himself.

He hurried past a group of rowdy men, probably pirates, who were talking in loud voices, drinking beer and rum and what not. At the door, he turned around and looked back at the Dark One. He had ordered himself a drink after all and was looking at the men with a stare as though he was contemplating flaying them for disturbing his peace and quiet.

Smee found himself thinking as he left the bar that the Dark One appeared to need sustenance after all.

*

That had been a lot of beer. And mead… and wine… and rum. While he could still walk straight, he could no longer think straight. It had always been like that. He could take on seven men on his own in a brawl or a swordfight after having drunk himself half to death and live to tell the tale, but he was no good at making decisions anymore. His mouth would always run away with him. At least on land. Aboard the Jolly Roger he could navigate through the nastiest storms in a drunken stupor and give the proper orders to get everyone out of there alive. That probably had to do with the undulating movements on board, not much different from the way the ground underneath felt to him now.

Oh, look at the stars. Had they always been so bright… so multitudinous?

Someone bumped into Killian, who was sure he had not bumped into them, preoccupied as he was. It had felt deliberate.

‘You! Stop!’ he shouted.

The beggar did, but didn’t turn around. Killian’s men also ceased their drunken conversations and turned their attention towards the little scene in front of them.

‘Even gutter rats have more manners than you just displayed,’ Killian said indignantly.

‘Ah, ah, I’m so sorry, sir,’ the creature muttered, turning his head.

Killian could see under his hood; the stranger’s face had a weirdly scaly greenish-golden tinge to it. Was that some kind of vile skin disease or had the poor sod been born that way?

‘Ah. I was wrong. Not a rat at all. More…’ he paused, looking for the right word, ‘… more like a crocodile.’

He came towards the man and knocked the cups filled with coins from his hands, causing the other to scramble on the ground after them. Goaded by his men’s laughter, Killian kicked the kneeling man over.

‘What’s your name, crocodile?’ he said.

He laughed along with the others until he realised the beggar was laughing as well. No, not really laughing, he was giggling gleefully, like a little child. He was clearly a madman.

The man stood up with much more ease than before and pushed his hood back. He looked younger than he had seemed, not just spryer, but also from his features, his hair, despite the unnatural colour of his skin. But his eyes were unnerving at best, a dark and glossy green, not a colour Killian had ever seen on a human – snake eyes.

Killian had seen the face before, however, he could not have forgotten that man, not in a million years, and it had certainly been less than ten.

‘You,’ he said, pointing, ‘I remember you.’

His tone was light. He was not disconcerted, not by this unexpected meeting, nor by the man’s different appearance and demeanour.

‘Always nice to make an impression,’ the other said and tossed one of the coins at him, as though paying him for a service. Was he expecting him to pick it up?

‘Where are my manners? We haven’t been properly introduced.’ He jumped into an over-exaggerated bow. ‘Rrrrumplestiltskin.’

Why wasn’t he limping anymore?

‘Or,’ Rumplestiltskin continued, ‘as others know me, the Dark One.’

Killian could hear his men behind him back away. The Dark One giggled and stepped towards them, driving them further away from their captain.

‘Ooh,’ he said delightedly, ‘I see my reputation proceeds me.’

‘It does,’ Killian said, glad his voice did not really betray any of the disquiet he was feeling. That man, the Dark One, he was still Milah’s husband. But as long as his men kept their mouths shut, nobody else needed to be harmed.

‘Good!’ Rumplestiltskin exclaimed, standing right behind him. ‘That’s gonna save us time during the question and answer portion of our game.’

‘What is it you want to know?’ Killian asked, turning around to face him.

The Dark One stood close to him, he dropped his voice to a more threatening tone, just for Killian’s ears.

‘How’s Milah, of course?’

Killian may have been so drunk that he could have thrown up on the Dark One’s shoes, or maybe that was because of fear, but he still managed to play dumb at the right moment. At least he hoped he did.

‘Who?’ he asked, grinning stupidly.

The Dark One’s giggle sounded forced, so close. He walked past Killian again.

‘Only too happy to, uh, dig out the memory. But, it gets really messy.’

‘She’s dead,’ said Killian. ‘Died a long time ago.’

Maybe the Dark One was sad to hear that, but that would not make him spare him. Who or what did he think killed her? First and foremost Killian had to save his crew and no one else.

‘What is it you want?’

‘We didn’t get a chance to finish our duel,’ the Dark One admitted.

Maybe it was his priority. Maybe that was why he had decided to meet him here. He clearly had known that Killian would react like that, because he was drunk and an idiot. His priority hadn’t been finding out about Milah, whether to steal her back or kill her, he wanted to kill him. More than her, he wagered, messier than her.

Killian immediately seized the hilt of his sword.

‘Ah! Not now. Tomorrow at dawn. I am not a cruel man, get your affairs in order. Also, you can spend the night knowing, it’ll be your last.’ Killian didn’t doubt that. Rumplestiltskin giggled again. ‘Maybe I am cruel.’

Killian hadn’t a doubt about that either nor that he deserved the cruelty, at least to some extent. He’d be damned if he didn’t go down fighting though.

‘And don’t think about trying to escape, because I will find you, and I will gut your entire crew like-a the fish!’

The Dark One, Rumplestiltskin lifted his right hand and suddenly in a puff of smoke, he was gone.

*

The footsteps echoed softly through the small alleyway. They sounded steady, not cautious, not nervous. That didn’t mean the captain wasn’t scared. Rumplestiltskin had smelled the fear on him before; it had been intoxicating. There was no fun in killing a man, especially that wretch, if he wasn’t scared.

He had come alone. Good. For all his particular loathing for the pirate, Rumple had to concede that he had stayed true to his word. Damn his fickle honour. There hadn’t been any in him, when he abducted Milah to do things with her that had likely killed her, or when he had made fun of her husband for trying to save her. And there hadn’t been any in him, when he had mocked and kicked that beggar last night.

Killian Jones was going to die now; the proud and insolent youth had it coming a long time.

Rumple threw the sword from the archway, on which he was perching, down at the captain’s feet, who stopped in his tracks and looked up at him.

‘Pick it up, dearie, and let’s begin.’

‘There’s no need,’ the pirate said, as his hand was going for his belt to draw his sword. When he looked down, however, it was gone from its scabbard.

Rumple stood behind him with the sword in his hand.

‘Sorry,’ he said happily, as the boy whirled around, ‘but killing a man with his own sword was just too delicious to pass up.’

Jones knew he was done for. Rumple could see it in his eyes. He was surely already wondering how he’d go. Rumple had not decided yet, but it would be fun, it would be excruciating. He would like to hear him squeal like a pig.

The pirate bent down to pick up the sword, which was of a much cheaper make than his own, like the one he had offered Rumple the last time they met, planning on murdering a helpless cripple in cold blood and leave a child abandoned. He didn’t hesitate, even though he probably expected Rumple to stab him from behind. He wouldn’t do that, of course, that would be too quick.

With a cry, suffused with fear and a desperate determination, the young man threw himself into a battle he could not win. They duelled for a little while. Rumple with ease and skill, the captain with brute strength, frantic to turn the tides in his favour.

Rumple disappeared into thin air, and Jones spun aimlessly, realising too late his enemy was standing behind him.

‘Ships that pass in the night. Well, at least one ship,’ the Dark One quipped.

The duel commenced, the captain more afraid now, more desperate, and more exhausted. Rumple doubted he did get any sleep that night. Neither did he, but he certainly didn’t need it, unlike the boy. Still not showing any sign of fatigue, Rumple nimbly sidestepped the attacking pirate, so he charged into a barrel and a crate, tripping over them, and dropping his weapon. What a poor swordsman. Maybe Rumple could have defeated him even without his powers.

Jones picked up the sword, cried again, probably to keep himself from weeping, and went back at Rumple, always attacking despite his exhaustion and the hopelessness of his situation. Rumple trapped his sword on the ground and kicked him, warded him off with one hand, while the pirate needed both his arms and the full weight of his body, not to be thrown backwards. Rumple broke the grip, hit him over the head with the hilt of his sword, effortlessly deflecting all his attacks, he finally disarmed him. He stepped on the sword, before the captain could lunge for it, his own sword pointed at him.

The kneeling man looked up at him, distressed at having lost, but not nearly afraid enough for Rumple’s liking. Rumple stared down at him with all the disdain and hatred he could muster. He wanted him to die alone like that, forsaken by his crew and everyone who loved him, while the one who killed him laughed at him, like he had laughed at his victims.

‘Go on,’ the boy said, panting. ‘I’m ready for the sword.’

Rumple put the sword to his throat. Killian winced but stood his ground. Rumple hated him even more for that. He should be begging for his life. Why was he so brave?

‘No,’ he whispered furiously. Not like that. He needed him to suffer. ‘Do you know what it’s like to have your wife stolen from you? To feel powerless to stop it? It feels like having your heart ripped from your chest.’

The young man’s eyes were filled with dread now. Good, good, he might enjoy it after all. Push him a little bit further. Make him beg for his life, see what really was going on behind those handsome features, how much the Dark One frightened him.

‘Actually, let me show you.’

With that he plunged his hand into the man’s chest. The pirate cried out in shock and pain as Rumple closed his fingers around the frantically beating heart.

‘Stop!’ someone shouted, and it was not the captain.

Rumple looked around at the person, who had entered the scene, without relinquishing his grip on the pirate’s heart. It was a woman, dressed in an overcoat, a leather waistcoat and breeches, buckled with a belt from which hung a sword, her dark hair long and loose. A pirate wench, but not only that.

‘Milah,’ said Rumple surprised when he saw his wife standing there, watching the struggling men in horror.

Rumple let go of the snivelling pirate who fell to the ground. Milah looked up from him to Rumple appalled and disbelieving. But this was nothing compared to how Rumple himself felt.

‘How?’ he asked. The captain had said she was dead. Why would he lie about that?

‘Milah,’ the young man gasped from the ground, clearly unable to move. ‘You have to run.’

‘No,’ she said with determination. ‘I’m not leaving without you.’

Rumple looked between the two of them. A new and different anger mixing in with the old.

‘Oh, how sweet,’ he said scathingly, ‘it appears there’s more to this tale than I know. Tell it to me, Milah!’

He placed the sword against the captain’s side to drive it into him if need be. It wouldn’t kill him straight away, but it would be painful and incapacitate him.

‘Please don’t hurt him,’ she cried. ‘I can explain.’

‘Tick-tock, dearie, tick-tock!’ he shouted, his anger not coming from the anger at being betrayed, but at being left in the dark by the pair of them, at someone stealing his property and making him feel like a fool for it, because it had been taken willingly.

‘That first night, when Killian and his crew came into the tavern, he told stories about the places he’d been, and I fell in love with him.’

Rumple drove the tip into the captain’s side, who groaned in pain.

‘I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way. I didn’t know how to tell you the truth. I’m sorry.’

Yes, she was sorry now, because he was going to stick her handsome lover like a pig. Killian Jones did not deserve a clean death, never had.

‘And so here we are. You’ve come to save the life of your twoo wuv, the pirate. I didn’t realise the power of true love before. It is impressive. I’d hate to break it up. Actually, no. I’d love to.’

He pushed the sword in deeper yet, wondering at what point it might be fatal. He had to pull it out before that; the captain’s troubles shouldn’t end too soon.

‘Wait!’ Milah said sharply. ‘I have something you want.’

‘Well, I find that very difficult to believe.’

He pulled the sword out of the pirate’s body, as Milah produced a red hat from her pocket. Rumple remembered it. It belonged to the man who had been going to trade him the magic bean.

‘Where did you get that?’ he asked with forced calm.

‘You know who I took it from. I may not know what the Dark One wants with a magic bean, but I have it.’

‘Oh,’ Rumple said through gritted teeth. He was angry, but did not feel disconcerted by the unexpected turn of events. That just made things more interesting. He could prolong their suffering, he was sure of it. ‘I feel a proposal coming on.’

‘The magic bean in exchange for our lives. Deal?’

Rumple approached her slowly. She was very serious, but also afraid, more afraid than her young lover had ever been during the last few hours. Did she know the bean could only save one of them, maybe not even that? He was the Dark One after all, and nobody entrapped the Dark One.

‘I wanna see it first,’ he said.

*

The salty sea air at the docks was enough to revive his spirits somewhat. The wound in his side was stinging. The crocodile had stuck in the sword – his sword, Killian thought darkly – pretty deeply, but he would heal in a few days, if he survived today at least. Milah was supporting him along the gangway. He had to be looking the worse for wear now, because the quartermaster’s first question was directed at Milah instead of his captain.

‘Milah, what happened?’

‘Fetch some water!’ she ordered. ‘And get the prisoner from below deck along with the booty he carried. Now!’

Killian accepted the skin with water Li offered him, but didn’t drink anything. He felt awful, but thirst wasn’t his immediate problem. Behind him, the Dark One walked on board.

‘Well, well,’ he said to Milah, ‘seems like you finally found the family you could never have with me.’

On the way to the docks, Rumplestiltskin had mostly talked at her. It seemed that he didn’t take Killian seriously anymore, after having defeated him so easily. He had made snide remarks about Killian’s capability as a swordsman, which he could stomach, since he had been the one who had humiliated him in the first place. The way he phrased it sounded like Milah was a foolish lecherous old hag, who had left the powerful Dark One for a pathetic pretty boy, who was playing at being a pirate.

Killian was furious that the Dark One dared to talk to Milah that way, but she had warned him not to cross him anymore, and she was right, of course. It was his big mouth that had landed them in that situation in the first place. It was her who’d had to work out a way out for them. She could have left him for dead in the alleyway after all. The crew would have followed her to the ends of the earth as well.

The prisoner was brought up from below deck. Someone handed Milah his pouch, and she pulled out the bean. She showed it to the Dark One, but before he could make a grab for it, she had tossed it at Killian, who caught it in his left hand and clenched his fist around it.

‘You asked to see it,’ he said, as the Dark One looked at him contemptuously, ‘and now you have.’

‘Do we have a deal?’ Milah said, drawing his attention back towards herself. ‘Can we go our separate ways?’

‘Do you mean, do I forgive you? Can I move on?’

As the Dark One turned his back on them, Milah looked at Killian, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘Perhaps, perhaps. I can see you are twooly in love.’

‘Thank you,’ Milah said, sounding mollified.

Killian wasn’t so sure the worst was over, and was proven right a moment later.

‘Just one question.’

‘What do you want to know?’ she said.

‘How could you leave Bae?’ he asked, his ugly face screwed up into a mean mask of malice and spite. Like a true demon.

Some of the ship’s ropes came loose with a crack and a clatter. Nobody had touched them. That had been the Dark One’s magic, a display of the anger inside him. An uneasy shuffle went through Killian’s crew.

‘Do you know what it was like walking home that night…’

‘Rumple,’ Milah interjected, but to no avail.

Killian felt uncomfortable standing there behind them, watching their dispute when he thought he was just as much to blame. Rumplestiltskin’s condescending treatment had silenced him, however. He didn’t want to be called a stupid boy in front of his men.

‘… knowing I had to tell our son…’ the crocodile continued viciously.

‘Please…’

‘… that his mother was dead?’

‘I was wrong to lie to you. I was the coward. I know that,’ said Milah imploringly.

‘You left him! You abandoned him!’ spat the Dark One.

‘And there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel sorry for that.’

‘Sorry isn’t enough!’ he shouted. Then he walked towards her. ‘You let him go.’

‘I let my misery cloud my judgement.’

‘Why were you so miserable?’ The Dark One observed her with the same contempt, he had solely reserved for Killian until now.

Killian wanted to shout out a warning, but the words got stuck in his throat.

‘Because I never loved you.’

The Dark One plunged his hand into Milah’s chest, like he had done to her lover before.

‘Milah!’ screamed Killian and ran to help her.

The Dark One raised his other hand, and an invisible force pushed him aside. Ropes seized him on their own accord and tied him to the mizzenmast.

He watched helplessly as the Dark One withdrew his hand, Milah’s glowing heart inside it. She stood frozen on the spot.

‘No!’

He somehow managed to free himself and rushed to her side. She sank into his arms, completely weakened, like a puppet. All he could do, was lower her to the ground as gently as he could. Milah looked up at him. Her fingers caressed his cheek tenderly.p>

‘I love you,’ she whispered and then gasped.

There was nothing at all behind her grey eyes.

The Dark One had crushed her heart. He was letting the dust drift away in the sea breeze. That bastard had killed her, because she had loved him. She needn’t have died. Why had she not fled last night? She could have survived. She could have lived out the rest of her life on the Jolly Roger.

‘You may be more powerful now, demon,’ Killian heard himself say. His voice rough, full of agony, ‘but you’re no less a coward!’

His heart contracted painfully, as if the Dark One still had it in his grasp. He wished he had; his heart reduced to ashes instead of Milah’s.

The Dark One stood before him. Killian got to his feet to tower over him.

‘I’ll have what I came for now,’ said the Dark One.

It didn’t sound like a demand, more like a statement, like it was out of the question that Killian wouldn’t willingly hand over the bean now.

‘You’ll have to kill me first,’ he said proudly, his hand still in a fist.

At this rate, he’d be with Milah in a few seconds. He had no chance against the Dark One, especially unarmed. The other still had his sword.

‘Ah-ah! I’m afraid that’s not in the cards for you, sonny boy.’

There was a glint of metal. Killian didn’t register what had happened to him right away. He heard something drop onto the deck, then a sharp searing pain shot from his left wrist upwards… or was it downwards? Where was his hand?

Before he knew it, he was kneeling on the ground, writhing in unspeakable agony. But he also became dimly aware, that the pain should be much, much greater than it was. The anguish about losing his true love was greater by far.

The Dark One picked up Killian’s severed hand. It was still clenched in a fist, just enough to hide the crystalline-looking bean from view. He felt his stomach heave.

Then the Dark One placed Killian’s sword against his neck, as though he was going to cut off his head, too.

‘I want you alive because I want you to suffer like I did.’

Rumplestiltskin had never suffered because he lost Milah. He hadn’t loved her. When he had come aboard the Jolly Roger to plead with him to let her go, he had pleaded for the sake of his son. That had been noble, of course, understandable, but it hadn’t been out of love for Milah. Whatever it was, Rumplestiltskin had lost something that mattered more to him than Milah.

Killian grabbed a fallen hook off the ground and lunged for the Dark One. The hook got stuck in his chest. A fraction of a second Killian was allowed to think he had succeeded, but he was being foolish, of course. The Dark One was laughing at him.

‘Killing me is gonna take a lot more than that, dearie.’

‘Even demons can be killed. I will find a way.’

‘Well, good luck living long enough.’

The Dark One disappeared in a puff of red smoke, taking with him Killian’s sword. The hook dropped onto the ground. Killian picked it up without thinking about it, staring at it, lost in other thoughts.

What had the Dark One meant when he said, “good luck living long enough”? Did he think Killian would take his own life? Did he think he would succumb to his wounds? Maybe he thought he would get himself killed, because of his big mouth? Maybe, but he was usually much better in a swordfight, even drunk… even with one hand tied behind his back.

There was a strange darkness before his eyes. It was only morning, what was that? Was the world coming to an end, because Milah…?

Killian looked down at her body. His heart was beating very fast, then slowed down considerably, as if it was going to stop altogether. A dark cloud was wafting in front of his mind, his eyes. He didn’t realise he was fainting, until the quartermaster rushed to his side and caught him before he crumpled onto the deck.

His last thought before his world went black, was that he had to find a way to live forever, to outlive the Dark One, in order to get his revenge.

*

It was a fine day. The sunlight was streaming in through the dusty windows, the cracks in the door. Rumple had not yet left the little farm where he had lived with Bae and Milah. He was going to leave it soon, however, when he got to use the magic bean. He was going to go to the land without magic, where Bae was, and he would find him.

He smiled at the picture of his son he had set up in front of his desk.

Soon, Bae, soon, he thought.

Then he placed the pirate’s severed hand on top of the desk. The dead fingers were already quite stiff; they gave off tiny crackling noises as Rumple unclenched them. Only when he reached the third finger and still did not see anything inside, did he realise that something was wrong.

The hand was lying open palmed in front of him, empty. No bean.

‘No!’ Rumple hissed. ‘He tricked me!’

He pushed the table over, and everything on top of it scattered onto the ground.

After all this, he was left with nothing? Where had that sneaky pirate hidden the bean then?

Oh, how he wished the insolent cur had perished from his wounds, thrashing in pain, he hoped his body had gone septic, infested with worms and maggots before he expired! He should have poisoned him before he left, so he could die a long and painful death.

No, he was probably going to be all right. He was a rather healthy young man, he would survive losing his wretched appendage. But if Rumple ever saw Killian Jones again, he would beat him to death, he would tear him limb from limb. He would certainly not let him escape with his life a second time!

*

The captain had still been out cold when the ship set sail. They had summoned a doctor to tend to him, cauterise the wound, and bind it, now he was back on his feet mere hours after the Dark One had maimed him to attend the funeral at sea.

Smee stood watching as the woman’s corpse shrouded in a linen cloth was thrown into the water. He had been quiet long enough. As the captain walked past him, looking as if he was going to retire yet again, he shouted through his gag to get his attention.

‘Allow him to speak,’ Captain Jones said in a weary voice.

The men holding Smee took out his gag and untied him. He strode over to the captain.

‘I want my bean,’ he said boldly, looking up at him.

‘Let me tell you how it works on my ship,’ the tall man said confidentially. ‘I make the demands you follow them.’ He nodded at him as though they were on a wavelength. His blue eyes were glinting mischievously. ‘The bean’s now mine.’

‘You have to give me something for it,’ said Smee.

‘Oh, I will. Your life. The chance to join my crew.’

‘So instead of the promise of eternal life, I get to scrub blood off your decks. How is that right?’

Smee wouldn’t usually be that forthright or outspoken, but he’d had a long day, being held prisoner below deck, gagged and tied up. He lost a perfectly good deal and a rather expensive bargaining chip. And he was somewhere he did not know where on a pirate ship.

‘What if I was to tell you I was about to set sail to a land where none of us will _ever_ grow old? Where I can discover how to get my revenge on Rumplestiltskin.’

The captain said the name like a curse, which Smee figured it was to him. All in all it was a better deal than the one he had going with the Dark One.

‘I’d say I could live with that,’ he said, smiling broadly.

‘Good,’ Jones looked down at him with some kind of patronising goodwill. ‘What’s your name, sailor?’

‘William. William Smee.’ He pointed at one of Jones’ men who wore his hat. ‘Can I have my hat?’

It just needed a gesture from the captain for the man to take it off and throw it at him. Smee caught it and put it on.

‘Well, Mr Smee,’ the captain said, ‘welcome aboard.’

He held out the bean in Smee’s face as if he was about to give it back to him after all. Instead he took aim and flung the bean far out into the sea. Where it landed, a giant whirlpool appeared.

‘Harden up and get ready to set sale, mates!’ the captain cried to his men as he climbed up the stairs to the helm. ‘There’s bumpy seas ahead!’

Smee had never seen a magic bean work. Well, who had? It was both an astonishing and terrifying sight. As the crew sprang into action, Smee was still standing open-mouthed, staring at the whirlpool, wondering if it would just swallow them up like some sort of leviathan.

‘What’s the name of the place we’re headed, captain?’

Jones didn’t respond right away. He picked up a hook and fitted it into the slot on the contraption over the stump where his left hand used to be. They heard a satisfying click when it locked in place. Then he grabbed the helm with his hand.

‘Neverland!’ he said, grinning at Smee with a mad look on his face, baring his big white teeth.

He spun the wheel hard around to port, and the ship headed straight for the howling abyss, which might turn out to be the beginning of a new life or the end of William Smee and everyone else on the Jolly Roger.

 

**3**

The old man slowly approaches his prisoner, who has never seen him limp before. He has only ever known him as the Dark One, the one with all the power in his homeland, a land of magic. In Storybrooke there is no magic or at least not enough to heal his crippled leg.

Smee sits tied up in the darkened basement, and in the sparse light Rumplestiltskin’s face comes gradually into view. He supports himself on a gold-topped cane. The grin, however, hasn’t changed, even if this is the face of a mortal man.

‘You’re probably wondering why I brought you here,’ Mr Gold says.

Smee is smart enough not to say anything; he has an inkling, but what if it’s a totally different reason, and he’s just confessing to something the pawnbroker has no clue about?

Mr Gold produces a red woollen hat from his pocket. It’s Smee’s.

‘I found this in the mines,’ he whispers and drapes it over his bound hands, ‘Mr Smee.’

Uh-oh, busted!

‘I am so sorry,’ Smee bursts out, scared beyond his wits. ‘I didn’t have…’

‘I’m not interested,’ Gold interrupts him, ‘in apologies.’

Somehow this version of the Dark One is even more unnerving than the gold-skinned one. At least that one had been cheerful on occasion, this one is just scary.

‘I’m interested in information,’ he continues in a tiny insistent voice that bores itself into Smee’s brain like a termite, ‘about the man you work for.’

Well, that sounds easy enough, Smee thinks relieved.

‘I’ll tell you everything you wanna know about Moe. Just…’

‘O no,’ Mr Gold interrupts again, ‘not about Moe. Your captain,’ he continues in an ominous voice.

Smee knows instantly who he’s talking about, and it strikes fear into his heart. He can’t even explain how Gold knows that he ever worked for him, but then… he has to know the story like everyone else here does.

‘Where is he?’

‘I’ve never seen him in Storybrooke, I swear. For some reason when the curse hit, it… it didn’t take him!’

Mr Gold leans in close. He looks full of hate, full of disgust, every bad feeling in his wiry body harboured for the captain, but then he would probably settle for his first mate instead to unleash his wrath, if he were available.

‘Then where is he?’

*

A man is standing at the beach. He is only a dark speck against the bright horizon, like a black fly on a white dress. To her he is a little bit more than that. Tall, lean, and muscular, she used to like the feeling of his strong arms around her. His scent, the smell of salty sea air, leather, sweat, oil, and rum, it was and is both repulsive and alluring for her. She has known him for almost thirty years, and that has been more than enough. He sometimes bores her to tears.

Sometimes she hates the man more than she is attracted to his pretty face, to the dark brooding gaze from beneath those black brows, to the clear blue of his eyes. Well, hate is too strong a word for the way she feels. She dislikes him, but mostly she is indifferent, like she is to almost everything in this world. Then again, nobody really likes him.

He is watching the other shoreline through his spyglass, where the sheep live. At least he isn’t a sheep, because he is vile, cruel, and dangerous, but no more dangerous than her; he is too stupid for that. He may be many years older than her, but his mind and body are not. As far as she is concerned, he still is the same hot-headed youth he was about a century ago. Her boy, she sometimes calls him in her head, because she looks and feels old enough to be his mother. Regina’s little brother, she thinks, chuckling to herself. Oh, the two of them will get along marvellously with each other.

When she approaches him, he turns and folds together the spyglass with his hook. He looks over at her; what ill feelings she has for him, she does not show them, forgets them even. He is useful to her, and she thinks he genuinely likes her. Both a bonus and a weakness, but he is too devious, too self-serving to be distracted by cordial feelings; his heart is set on revenge too much to bother making friends, especially with villains like herself.

‘Hello, Hook,’ she says, smiling at him, not entirely insincere. He really is likeable enough.

‘Hullo, Cora,’ he replies; his voice dark and soft as silk. ‘You tell me you’d something important to show me.’

It is dangerous for him to leave the place he’s been trying to infiltrate in order to speak with her, she knows that. Not all sheep over there are completely gullible, and he doesn’t like risking his neck when it doesn’t further his pursuit for vengeance. Then again, all he’s ever done the last twenty-eight years was doing things she wanted, because he has to trust her – the more powerful one – that it is in both their best interests, otherwise she would probably do away with him; he is not _that_ useful.

She shows him the vial with the purple ashes from the wardrobe.

‘Sparkly dirt,’ he says sardonically and sighs. ‘Wonderful.’

‘Just the remains of a magical wardrobe,’ she looks at him intently, ‘that can travel between worlds.’

This gives him pause.

‘Is there enough to get us where we need to go?’

‘Not quite, but it’s a start.’

He smiles. His eyes put on a misty quality, as though he’d like to seduce her back into bed. He wouldn’t dare, never did, never really wanted she imagines, but he likes to pretend he has the upper hand sometimes. When he speaks, his voice comes out in a purr.

‘We’re almost ready to set sail. What’s our port of destination?’

‘Storybrooke.’

‘Hmm, curious name.’ He looks back at the safe haven, without really seeing it. ‘Is that where…?’

‘She is,’ she finishes the sentence for him. Then she looks him up and down, awaiting his reaction, which will not come as much of a surprise. ‘And so is he.’

‘Excellent.’ His voice does not betray the turmoil of emotions going on inside him, but she knows him too well. She can almost speak along with him. ‘You’ll be able to see your daughter, and I can skin myself a crocodile.’

Oh, you sweet-faced monster, she thinks to herself, smiling at him, we’ll just see.

‘Right now, there is something else I need you to do,’ she tells him. ‘I’ve got a surprise waiting for you on the other shore.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's the end of the first chapter.  
> If you've made it thus far, please leave a comment, it would mean the world to me.
> 
> Thank you!


	2. Fee-fi-fo-fum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He would like to get_ something _out of this, and a symbol is close enough. No spoils in forms of coins or rubies, but a powerless magic bean, representing his own deficiency. One almost like the one that had started all this bloody mess in the first place, and the useless bean will be there when it all ends. Moreover a magic bean is a magic bean, even if it is dried-up. Who says nobody will be able to get it to work again?_

**1**

From a distance he can already see the smoke rising. He knows where that is, of course, he has lived on the island for months now. Cora could have taken them to the village by magic, but he thinks she does that sometimes, acting as if she’s as ordinary as he is. Maybe she likes to pretend she is in no rush.

Well, he is rather. He wants to get to that Storybrooke to take revenge, but he can only fight her with words. Words that rarely fail him, until now.

He is a ruthless pirate. He has seen his fair share of dead bodies, not few of them his own doing, but to see so many innocents lying around, scattered carelessly as if thrown by a massive hand, men, women, and children, slaughtered, their chests bloody, the cavities empty because Cora has ripped their hearts out, renders him speechless.

‘Do you like my little surprise, captain?’ she asks, glancing at him sideways.

He knows she is smiling her wicked half-smile. Now is not the time to fight.

‘Aye,’ he turns to her, grinning as well.

He decides to forget that he tried to befriend them, maybe liked a few. That isn’t what he’s here for. He’s not here to make friends, to live here, he’s here to take the next step on his path to revenge.

‘In about half an hour, four women will come to this place,’ Cora tells him. ‘One of them you already know. She’s the warrior.’

Killian knows Mulan quite well. She was one of the first he met at the safe haven. He also knows she doesn’t like him.

‘One of them is a new arrival; the princess Aurora who has been under a Sleeping Curse cast by Maleficent until very recently. She is not important to us right now. The remaining two on the other hand are even more so. They are Snow White and her daughter, Emma Swan. They look the same age, but don’t be fooled.

‘Emma is the blonde woman. She is the Saviour who broke Regina’s curse. She has a son, Henry. Do not reveal to them you know this. I’m merely telling you to prepare you. You are to gain their trust. Find out everything you can about Storybrooke, especially regarding my daughter. Do you understand?’

He nods. She looks up into his face.

‘Do not fail. If they recognise you, kill them, take Snow White’s heart if the opportunity presents itself, and return to me. Then we can procure the compass together.’

Killian seizes her hand, kisses it, and looks deeply into her eyes. He knows this is how he can distract her.

‘At your service, Your Majesty,’ he coos and smiles.

The look on her face tells him she remembers. She is not the only one with power. They just use it differently and to varying success.

She impatiently disengages his grip on her hand, none the wiser. Her eyes trail dismissively over his face and body, but he isn’t disconcerted. He has bested her, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

‘Here,’ she says and snaps her fingers.

Killian feels a familiar weight disappear from his left hip and, sure enough, as he looks down he sees she has magically removed his sword and scabbard. He feels an old shame well up inside him, as he remembers someone else who disarmed with magic.

‘What did you…?’

‘Relax, Hook,’ she says, untroubled by his palpable anger. ‘I will just keep it safe until you return to me. I cannot risk the women noticing you are armed.’

She lifts her hand again and disappears in a cloud of purple smoke. Too much like the crocodile. Well, at least the colour is different.

When he’s sure she’s really gone, Killian stuffs the cuff into his pocket and drapes the cloak he wears here to hide his pirate’s attire over himself. He removes his hook from its socket and puts it into his satchel. Then he drags a corpse to the side without looking at her face and crawls under her. He hopes it really is only a few minutes and drinks a mouthful of rum from his flask.

A child lies not very far from where he’s hiding. He knows her name. Killian turns his head and pulls the dead woman between them, so he isn’t temped to look again.

At first the children at the camp had been frightened of his stump, but they eventually had warmed to him. He had always liked children, maybe one day would have wanted to be a father, but that thought is long gone, forever. There is no future for him, just one goal, one final murder, watch the man die, and then there is nothing left for him to do but join Milah.

He wishes he could, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep here. Soon it’ll be midday. The sun is already sitting high in the sky. Killian puts his left arm against his nose and starts breathing through his mouth.

Well, he thinks, at least he doesn’t have to pretend he’s distressed when they find him.

‘Oh my God!’

He hears a woman’s voice. For a moment he’s frozen in shock, even though he has been warned. Maybe he has fallen asleep after all. He doesn’t move. His face is planted on something soft. Don’t move yet, he tells himself, when he feels his stomach revolting.

‘This can’t be,’ Mulan says.

He recognises her voice. She’s the one he has to be careful with. Even when he first came here, she had been suspicious of him. Strangers are always treated with suspicion, and why not? He is a spy after all. Nothing more than that.

Well, he can occasionally do as he pleases with the power he has over Cora. The power she doesn’t understand, because she is magical, and he is not, so he has to resort to other, sometimes more drastic measures.

‘Our land, we were protected here, hidden. How did the ogres find us?’

One good thing about this island and by extension that he had to infiltrate it, is that ogres don’t come here. On the bigger island where he stayed with Cora during the curse, there are many ogres. Of course, he doesn’t know how often he ran into them, because the days were impossible to count. Thinking back, it may just have been that one day over and over again. Or maybe he simply couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and it had always seemed less than it actually was. He wonders if he had felt it, when the curse was broken or only a few hours after that. Cora had probably known instantly. Magic is just such a strange and incomprehensible thing to him.

‘Ogres didn’t do this,’ another woman’s voice says.

Killian doesn’t recognise it either. So this is either Snow White, Aurora, or Emma Swan. He still refrains from moving, bile rising up from his stomach when he remembers where he is.

‘Cora did. Their hearts… they were ripped out.’

Oh, she’s a smart one, isn’t she?

‘This was her magic, twisted and evil. We have to stop her!’

Yeah, nobody really knew how twisted Cora could be. But only a vile creature like himself can stand to be around her or at least survive that long. He doesn’t know why. He’s not afraid of her, so maybe that helps.

‘Too late,’ Mulan says, sounding close to tears. ‘She killed them all.’

‘We have to stop her before she hurts anyone else!’

He can’t stand it much longer. It’s so hot under here in that stupid cloak, and the smell, Gods, the smell!

‘Hey! Hey! Look!’ says the first woman.

‘There’s someone under there,’ cries a third unknown voice.

‘Please,’ he mumbles. Now that he’s discovered, there’s no need to be quiet.

‘He’s alive.’

‘Please, help me!’

He feels the weight of the dead woman being lifted off his body, and someone turns him roughly around.

He looks up into the bright sun now, nearly blinded. The four women stand around him.

‘It’s okay,’ says the second woman, he now recognises as Snow White, in a friendly voice. ‘We won’t hurt you.’

He looks around. There is the blonde woman, Emma.

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you…’

Well, he survived that ordeal at least.

*

Emma eyes the man from a distance. He is sitting at the table, looking very subdued, as though thinking about something, timid and unobtrusive. Dark haired, blue eyed, with a cloak that looks slightly too big for him and cannot quite hide his left arm where his hand is missing.

‘You have seen him before?’ she asks Mulan, as she walks back with her from salvaging two cups that are relatively intact.

‘Yes, I’ve seen him around. He’s a blacksmith, came to our camp a couple of months ago, said he lost his hand in an ogre attack.’

‘Why would Cora leave a survivor?’ says Emma, expressing her biggest doubt about the man’s story. ‘It’s messy, it doesn’t make sense.’

‘You think he’s lying?’

‘I think Cora tricked us before. I don’t want that to happen again.’

They arrive at the table. She hands him one of the cups and gives the other one to Aurora.

‘There you go.’

The man takes the cup and smiles. Mulan fills it with water from her skin.

‘I can’t thank you enough for your kindness. Fortune it seems has seen fit to show me favour.’

He drinks. His voice is shaky, weird, a bit like he’s about to cry. She can’t quite place it. Something isn’t right.

‘An island full of corpses… you’re the only one to escape. How exactly did that happen?’

‘She attacked at night… slaughtered everyone in one fell swoop. When she started ripping out people’s hearts, I hid under the bodies of those who had already been killed. Pretended to be dead myself. Mercifully the ruse worked.’

‘So much for fortune favouring the brave,’ she says darkly.

He seems slightly peeved about her hidden accusation. Well, it only is an accusation if he considers himself brave or at least wants to be. But why would he?

‘It was all I could do to survive.’

She seems to be getting somewhere. His defensive tone makes her think, there is more to him, something to find out.

She leans forward, resting her forearms on the table-top to be more on an eye level with him. The man looks up at her confused and a little fearful, but moves towards her a bit. She doesn’t know what this is about. She looks down at her hands and then away from him, to play for time and to keep him in suspense a little.

‘I’m gonna let you in on a little secret,’ she says, looking suddenly deeply into his eyes. ‘I am pretty good at knowing when someone is lying to me.’

‘I am telling you the truth,’ he says slowly. He sounds different, more intense, than before.

She smiles at him, feeling a bit sad. The man looks back at her, even more confused and also unnerved now.

‘We should leave here,’ says Mulan who hasn’t noticed anything, ‘in case Cora decides to come back.’

‘We should start searching for a new portal back to Storybrooke. I only got about five minutes with my husband, not to mention my grandson,’ says Mary Margaret, looking down at the man, as though she knows Emma is testing him.

The man looks up unsurprised and smiles.

‘You have a grandson?’

‘Long story.’

She grasps the hilt of her sword, apparently embarrassed.

‘I know this land well,’ the man says, evidently back in his element. ‘I can guide you…’

Emma grabs him by the hair, yanks his head back, and puts her knife against his throat.

‘You’re not gonna guide us anywhere until you tell us who you really are.’

*

As Mulan ties him to a tree on the mainland, Killian thinks that his opportunity to kill them is long gone. He also wonders if he would have killed them anyway or merely tried to escape. Firstly, he might have put himself in danger by lingering. And secondly, he isn’t sure whether he wants to kill them at all.

Especially Emma. She has looked at him in a way no woman has looked at him in a long time. Not frightened or hostile, nor lecherous or condescending, just friendly, understanding even. Yes, she has been testing him and she had found him out. But even so. A friend, an equal to him, that had only ever been Milah and probably Tinker Bell. Cora isn’t really a friend and certainly doesn’t view him as an equal. Then again, the Swan girl is very beautiful, luminous even, _and_ the Saviour, so he is inferior to her after all, but at least she doesn’t look at him like she thinks he is.

Right now, of course, she looks as if she’s ready to gut him, so there’s a problem. He needs to get out of here alive, then he can decide on his further course of action, meaning to escape them or at the very least this land.

‘I already told you, I’m just a blacksmith,’ he says in the high, quivering voice he so hates, but he knows it can induce pity in the right woman.

‘Sure you are,’ says Emma, who is not that woman.

She whistles loudly. There’s roaring in the distance. He’s heard that sound before.

‘You don’t want to talk to us? Maybe you’ll talk to the ogres while they rip you limb from limb. Come on!’ She turns to leave with the others.

‘What?’ Killian isn’t sure she’s bluffing. He also doesn’t know if he should push his luck finding out. Being torn apart by an ogre is not an end he would have chosen, especially not when victory is so close at hand.

The fear in his voice isn’t entirely feigned. ‘You… You… You can’t just leave me here like this!’

He’s pulling at the ropes, but they don’t budge. If they leave him here, he will die.

‘What if he’s telling the truth?’ asks the princess, darling girl.

Here’s the woman he’s been hoping for. But she doesn’t have the power to persuade the others.

‘He’s not!’ the Swan girl says.

Aurora, the princess, looks at him with pity. She still can’t help him.

‘Good for you!’ Killian says loudly, more furious now than scared. He prefers it that way. The snivelling blacksmith had begun to do his head in.

At least they have stopped walking away.

‘You bested me. I can count the people who have done that on one hand.’

He’s gone over to scathing now. The princess looks at him scandalised, like he’s let her down. Well, she wouldn’t be the first one.

‘That supposed to be funny?’ says Emma, walking back to face him again. ‘Who are you?’

‘Killian Jones,’ he says, ‘but most people have taken to call me by my more colourful moniker.’ She looks at him questioningly, her eyebrows raised. ‘Hook.’

‘Hook!’ repeats Snow White, clearly shocked.

‘Check my satchel!’ he says testily.

The ogres are still coming, and he really doesn’t want to die today.

Emma continues looking at him. Her expression has changed. She looks as if she thinks she’s dreaming or… He doesn’t know.

‘As in Captain Hook?’ she says at length.

‘Ah, so you’ve heard of me.’

He feels weirdly happy about that. Even people from a land without magic know his name? It’s rather flattering. Maybe his reputation is better there, than it is here. Not that that would be warranted.

Snow White pulls his hook from the satchel and gasps, though he cannot really tell. The grunting now emanating from just beyond the treeline is louder and muffles whatever sound she’s making.

He tries to keep up a stoic face. If people see his fear, they know how weak he can be and tend to abandon him. He isn’t weak. He mustn’t be. If he isn’t Captain Hook, the fearsome, fearless pirate, then what the hell is he?

‘You better hurry up. They’re getting closer. So unless you wanna be dinner, you better start talking.’

There is too much truth in Emma’s words to be ignored, and so he does start talking. But not because he’s scared. He needs to finish what he’s started, needs to go to Storybrooke. Whether or not he betrays Cora now, he has to get out of here.

‘Cora wanted me to gain your trust so I could learn everything there is to know about your Storybrooke. She didn’t want any surprises when she finally got over there.’

‘She can’t get there,’ Snow White says triumphantly. ‘We destroyed the wardrobe.’

‘Ah,’ Killian says in a low voice, ‘but the enchantment remains. Cora gathered the ashes. She’s gonna use them to open up a portal.’

All five of them can hear the ogres. They’re closer still. Two, maybe three, but in his position it only takes one.

‘Now, if you’ll kindly cut me loose!’

‘No,’ Mulan says turning back to him, her sword drawn. ‘We should leave him here to die to pay for all the lives that he took.’

Maybe she should just run him through and be done with it. If he has to die now, he’d prefer a sword. Quicker, less messy.

‘That was Cora, not me!’ he replies in frustration. At least he feels furious at the accusation. Fury fuels bravery and maybe strength.

Emma looks at him, like she doesn’t believe him.

‘Let’s go,’ she says dismissively.

‘Wait,’ he says quietly. ‘Wait!’ he screams, when he realises they won’t stop. The ogres respond with roaring. ‘You need me alive.’

‘Why?’ asks Emma.

How few people _need_ him alive? Not those four, not really. Maybe Cora? No, probably not. But he has something she doesn’t know he has, and they don’t know it anyway. So, maybe they really do need him alive after all.

‘Because we both want the same thing,’ he says deviously.

Emma looks at him, as if she’s wondering about something. He needs to worry about that later, if there is a later.

‘To get back to your land.’

‘You would say anything to save yourself. Why are we supposed to believe you now?’

Because you can tell I’m not lying, he thinks. But then again, sometimes he himself can’t tell whether he’s lying or not.

‘I arranged for transport with Cora, but, seeing how resourceful _you_ are, I’ll offer you the same deal. I’ll help you if you promise to take me along.’ Especially since they are much sweeter travel companions than Cora is.

‘How are _you_ going to help us get home?’ Snow White asks doubtfully.

‘The ashes will open a portal. To find your land, she needs more. There’s an enchanted compass. Cora seeks it. I’ll help you obtain it before she does.’

Emma leans in close and whispers, ‘So Cora won’t make it to Storybrooke, and we’ll be one step closer to getting home.’

And he doesn’t really care if Cora reaches Storybrooke, not as long as he does. Come to think of it, with enough motivation she might even find another way. He doesn’t need to fool himself, Cora doesn’t care if he comes along either, but the reason why she gives him the chance at all is still lost on him. Maybe her plan from the start was to betray him, but then why has she put up with him all this time? No, there is no way that Cora will not betray him at some point. So all he has to do is to betray her before she gets the chance to do it to him.

Emma turns around and looks at her mother.

Snow White shakes her head. ‘Sounds too good to be true.’

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Killian says curtly.

Again the air is rent with the ogres’ roaring. They probably smell him on the wind. The fear he tries to hide.

Emma turns back to him, her knife at his throat again.

‘You tell me one thing, and whatever you say I better believe it.’

If she cuts him, the ogres will get here even sooner. Would she? Would she kill him now, if he lies? What if he doesn’t know?

‘Why does Captain Hook wanna go to Storybrooke?’

Well, he knows that one. Isn’t really a secret, is it? Everyone seems to know it.

‘To exact revenge on the man who took my hand,’ he says, out of habit leaving out the most important part. ‘Rumplestiltskin.’

*

She really hopes that the decision was in all their best interests, except maybe Hook’s. Mulan untied him from the tree while Emma still threatened him with the knife. He didn’t put up a fight, when Mulan looped the rope around his forearms instead, making extra sure he can’t slip his left arm through. Now they are trudging after him through the forest while he keeps up a constant flow of information. He doesn’t really say anything relevant, just updates them on their relative position to the compass. Sometimes he says he’s thankful that they haven’t left him to be eaten by the ogres, but Emma hears a hint of sarcasm in his voice. She’s not sure everyone else hears it. He doesn’t know of course that she wouldn’t really have left him there to die anyway, because unlike her he cannot tell if someone is lying. She also can’t help thinking that someone, who expects others to do something as horrible as this, might be willing to do it themselves, but maybe she’s being unfair. Maybe he just encountered a lot of horrible people in his life. After all they made a good show of leaving him there, and even if he had tried to hide it, he had been quite scared.

‘Up ahead,’ Hook calls to them. ‘We’ll find the compass just over the ridge.’

Mary Margaret and Emma bring up the rear while Mulan is walking directly behind Hook, her sword drawn so he doesn’t get any ideas. Aurora is walking behind them.

‘Do you get the feeling he’s leading us exactly where Cora wants us? That this whole thing’s a trap?’ Mary Margaret asks Emma quietly. The three up ahead cannot hear her.

‘It’s definitely a trap,’ Emma replies. ‘As long as _we_ know they’re trying to play us, we can…’

‘Stay one step ahead of them,’ Mary Margaret finishes the sentence for her, looking impressed.

‘Exactly.’

They catch up to the others who are waiting just beyond the ridge where the forest ends. There they get their first glimpse at the countryside behind it. Emma stares at a beanstalk, about a mile away, ten times thicker than a tree trunk, climbing up, up, up without any support whatsoever into the sky and vanishing into the clouds.

‘Let me guess,’ she says to Hook, trying to sound composed. Something she’s been doing constantly since she’s arrived in fairy tale land, ‘the compass is up there?’

‘Oh yeah,’ he replies in a light voice.

‘So how do we… get to it?’ she asks.

‘It’s not the climb you need to worry about,’ he says, clearly the only one of them who doesn’t worry. ‘It’s the giant at the top.’

Of course, there’s a giant at the top, why wouldn’t there be? But she finds the fact that Hook is so calm excessively suspicious. She needs to keep an eye on him, because she has to be ready for the possibility that he will betray them the moment he gets the chance.

Well, now at least since they can see where they’re going, they don’t have to rely on him to guide them anymore. Mulan still pushes him ahead to keep him in sight, and the others follow. Less than half an hour later they are almost at the base of the beanstalk. It really is enormous. Large tendrils criss-cross over each other to form the stalk itself, winding upwards not exactly in a straight line. Even so close to it, they can’t see the tip. She wonders if there actually is a castle on top of the clouds.

‘It’s a little freakier than I remember from the story.’

‘Reminds me of death,’ Mulan says darkly.

‘Encouraging,’ Mary Margaret comments.

‘Well,’ Hook says loudly, still the only one completely unperturbed, ‘your compass awaits. Shall we?’

He walks towards the beanstalk.

‘Wait,’ Emma says, following him, ‘if these beans create ...’ she looks for a word that doesn’t make her feel like a complete idiot and draws a blank, ‘ _portals_ … why not just pick one and go home? Why the compass?’

‘Because there _aren’t_ any more beans,’ Hook replies impatiently. ‘Whatever story you think you know, my dear, is most certainly wrong.’

Emma digs in her memory for the story, which she hasn’t read for several years.

‘There was a guy named Jack and a cow and something about an evil giant with a treasure and a golden goose… or harp…,’ she says vaguely.

They arrive directly below the beanstalk and stop. Now Emma can see the beanstalk is breaking through the clouds and grows higher still.

Hook smiles sarcastically. ‘Sounds like a lovely tale, but the truth’s a bit more gruesome. The giants grew the beans, but rather than use them for good, they used them to plunder all the lands. Jack was a man who fought a terrible war, defeating all but one of the evil giants.’

While he’s babbling on, Emma looks at Mary Margaret for confirmation. She nods. So at least that story is true.

‘The beans were destroyed by the giants as they died. If they couldn’t have their magic, then nobody could. It’s really very bad form.’

‘Evil giants who made magic portal beans?’ repeats Emma. ‘Why doesn’t anyone just go up and grow some more?’

She smiles at Hook, but he apparently is the expert on that subject.

‘Because one giant survived… the strongest and most terrible of them all. And we’ll have to get past him to…’

‘The magic compass,’ Mary Margaret interrupts him.

‘Indeed,’ he says. ‘The treasure remains, and amongst it is the compass.’

Emma thinks that this might be why he knows so much about it. Treasures and pirates go well together, unless that story is also untrue.

‘Now, it will guide us to your land. Cora has the means to open a portal with the wardrobe ashes, but she can’t find your land without the compass. Once we get it, steal the ashes from her, and we’re on our way.’

Unless, Emma thinks, he steals the compass from us and takes it to Cora instead. Or unless we just don’t take him home with us. She doesn’t think he should actually seek out Mr Gold. It wouldn’t be healthy for either of the men, and Hook could just live out his life here. This after all is his homeland, unlike hers, and he doesn’t have a child waiting for him back in Storybrooke.

‘How do we know you’re not just using us to get the compass _for_ Cora?’ Mulan says, voicing Emma’s doubts.

He looks at them seriously. ‘Because you four are far safer company.’ Emma wonders if he’s afraid of Cora. For once she truly believes him. ‘All I need is a ride back. I’ll swear allegiance to whomever gets me there first.’

Which isn’t all that comforting to know, Emma thinks. What if he decides Cora can get him to Storybrooke first, because she already has the ashes? Would he swear allegiance back to her?

‘Then we’d better start climbing,’ she says.

The sooner they get up there, the sooner they can get the compass. The sooner they get the compass, the sooner they can decide on how to take the ashes from Cora. If she didn’t consider abandoning him somewhere along the way, Emma would suggest Hook steal it, since he surely knows a thing or two about unlawful appropriation. Then again, so does she. But to let him back near Cora is probably not the best course of action. They need to find a way to get to her without him.

‘Right. So…’ Hook laughs sheepishly. ‘I failed to mention that the giant enchanted the beanstalk to repel intruders.’

Oh, he really sets her teeth on edge.

‘All right,’ she says, not trying to hide her impatience anymore, ‘so how do we get up there?’

‘Well, I’ve got a counterspell from Cora.’ He holds out his tied-up hands. ‘If you’d be so kind.’

Mary Margaret steps up to untie him.

He leans forward until his face is very close to hers and grins in a way that makes Emma squirm, especially when she brings to her mind that she is her mother. Mary Margaret can handle herself though.

‘Thank you, milady,’ he says and winks.

Mary Margaret turns away from him and rolls her eyes.

Hook takes off the cloak to reveal a black leather vest and a shirt underneath it. He holds up his right arm showing them the leather cuff at his wrist which gives off some dark magic. Emma thinks she can actually feel it.

‘I’ve got one more of these.’ He pulls it from his pocket. ‘Cora was to accompany me.’

Emma wonders why on earth Cora would entrust her cuff to him. She isn’t naïve; she must know how unreliable he is, more than they do.

‘So, which one of you four lovelies shall take her place? Hmm?’

He looks around at their unenthusiastic faces. Emma wonders if she can wrestle the cuff he wears off his arm, but decides that would be very silly, not to mention childish.

‘Go on. Fight it out. Don’t be afraid to, you know, really get into it.’

Well, she thinks, no more childish than he looks at the prospect of them fighting over the privilege of going up a giant beanstalk with him of all people. On the other hand, it _would_ be really easy to get rid of him during the climb. Not that she would actually do it, unless he were to attack her. She doesn’t think he would somehow.

*

‘I was hoping it would be you,’ he says smiling when Emma walks up to him holding her right arm aloft.

She has engaged some mechanism on the sleeve of her jacket to open it almost to her elbow. He reckons it has a similar functionality to buttons.

‘Just get on with it.’

He can see the hostility in her eyes and in the other women’s, especially Mulan’s, and he certainly doesn’t blame them. Then again, he’s really glad that Emma is going with him and not just for obvious reasons. When he heard Mulan claiming the spot for herself at first, he had been a tad worried because if anyone is prepared to take him out on the way up, it is her. Aurora, the princess, as likeable and sweet as the girl might be, he would probably have had to hold onto her all the way up because she doesn’t look like she can climb to save her life, literally. If she falls down while he is with her, there is no knowing what Mulan would do to him… No, actually, there is absolutely no question as to what she would do. And if Snow White had been be the one, then he’d be tempted to take her heart after all, and he actually doesn’t want to do that to the Swan girl’s mother.

After Emma has acquired something from Mulan to help her with the giant, Killian has seen her talking in private with her. He wonders what that was all about and hopes it isn’t some scheme on how to dispose of him. Mulan after all seemed adamant Emma needed not only something to protect herself against the giant but also against him. If only they knew. Right now he is standing firmly behind his plan to help them and especially himself to get to Storybrooke, and Cora be damned. After all everything is going smoothly so far. He can look forward to a very long climb in the company of a girl he fancies, who hates his guts, but maybe that can be helped. Maybe he can get her to open up a little, show her a different side of himself, and if that fails at least get the chance to do something heroic.

‘Put your hand right here. That’s a good girl.’

He places her hand on his right shoulder and puts the cuff around her wrist.

‘This will allow you to climb. There are other dangers. Thankfully you’ve got me to protect you.’

He holds up his left arm and points at his stump. He smiles. Emma doesn’t look amused.

‘Can’t climb one-handed, can I?’

With much hesitation Emma takes his hook out from the satchel and hands it to him. He can see the others exchange uneasy glances.

‘Don’t think I’m taking my eyes off you for a second,’ she warns him.

He snaps the hook into place. ‘I would despair if you did.’

Maybe he would. He’s not sure. What he does know is he likes looking at her.

Emma gives him back his satchel. ‘Let’s go.’

They walk over to the beanstalk and start climbing. He estimates it’ll take a bit more than three hours to get up there. Whatever he claims, Killian has not been on a giant beanstalk before either, in fact he doesn’t even know if this isn’t the only one there is, and right now he really hopes that the two of them make it up and down again unscathed.

 

**2**

They have been at it for a while. Emma doesn’t have a watch on her, so she doesn’t know for how long exactly. This makes her wonder if watches work here at all, and how they measure time. Mulan had seemed to understand what she meant when she'd told her to give them ten hours, so there has to be some measurement of time very similar to her world. Well, she won’t ask Hook. Mary Margaret knows the answer just as well.

‘First beanstalk?’ he calls down to her.

He’s right above her and obviously a quicker climber, despite his handicap. Ha! Handicap, very funny!

‘Well, you never forget your first,’ he continues.

Oh, so they _do_ have the same kind of lame pick-up lines here as in her world. Good to know. Maybe when they are back on solid ground, she should give him a good kick up the… Oh, never mind.

‘You know,’ he continues undeterred, ‘most men would take your silence as off-putting, but I love a challenge.’

‘I’m concentrating,’ she replies.

‘No, you’re afraid,’ he counters, waiting for her to catch up. ‘Afraid to talk, to reveal yourself, to trust me.’

When she’s on a level with him, she sees he actually means what he says. Like he’s a bit disappointed that she doesn’t trust him. However, so far he really hasn’t given her any reason to.

‘Things will be a lot smoother if you do.’

‘You should be used to people not trusting you,’ she retorts, continuing to climb past him.

‘Ah, the pirate thing,’ he says, pretending to be offended. ‘Well, I don’t need you to share. You’re something of an open book.’

He continues to catch up with her.

‘Am I?’ she asks, slightly amused, and stops climbing.

He has stopped as well.

‘Quite.’ He grins at her happily, like a little boy who got extra sweets for dessert. ‘Let’s see. You volunteered to come up here because you… were the most motivated. You need to get back to a child.’

‘That’s not perception,’ she says, wondering why she feels a little disappointed. ‘That’s eavesdropping.’

‘Ah,’ he says unruffled, ‘but you don’t want to abandon him the way you were abandoned.’

‘Was I?’ she says to play for time, hoping he doesn’t realise he’s on the right track.

‘Like I said, an open book.’ He looks way too pleased with himself.

‘How would you know that?’

He looks upwards, away from her. ‘I spent many years in Neverland, home of the Lost Boys. They all share the same look in their eyes… the look you get when you’ve been left alone.’

When he looks down at her again, she finds herself wondering what kind of look she can see in his eyes.

‘Yeah, well, my world ain’t Neverland.’

‘But an orphan’s an orphan.’

Since he will most certainly lie to her anyway, she doesn’t ask him what she’d like to know. She doesn’t want to destroy that connection she feels with him, though she isn’t entirely sure why. He’s Cora’s henchman and betraying her to save his own skin. Why would she even want to have a connection with him? He doesn’t seem like he wants to change his ways. And why would she even want to try and make him?

She continues her climb, more to get away from him than anything else. But of course she can’t, because the only way is up, and that’s where he wants to go, too.

‘Love has been all too rare in your life, hasn’t it?’

She doesn’t really want to look at him. His eyes pierce her, she feels right into her soul, and it’s not exactly pleasant.

‘Have you ever even been in love?’

The way he says it, angers her. A bit like he knows everything about love, and she has no clue, like he despises her for it. She smiles at him after all, trying not to think about Neal.

‘No. I have never been in love.’

She keeps on climbing and ignores him the rest of the way. Of course, she can hear him clambering below her, but she refuses to look down. He’ll be all right. And what does she care anyway, whether he catches up with her or not? She can get the compass without his help just as well.

*

Beyond the clouds, the beanstalk breaks through a massive slab of stone that floats on empty space and stops growing only about thirty feet above it. Emma and Hook climb off the beanstalk and onto the platform, both panting heavily after hours of climbing. She looks around. They are standing in what looks like a courtyard to a huge castle, but everything around here is dead. Skeletons of men, big and small, are lying on the ground. The castle itself is overgrown with something that looks like ivy. Everything is dark and gloomy. The air smells stale and foul; the stench of death.

‘What happened here?’ Emma asks him.

‘That’s where the final battle was,’ answers Hook quietly.

She gets the feeling he’s not all that chipper himself. Who knew that the sight of a battlefield could upset a pirate?

Emma turns away from him. Despite the depressing sight, she is still impressed by her surroundings. Everything is so big. The castle is huge, and it hangs unsupported above the clouds. She has not yet seen magic quite like that.

‘Give me your hand!’ he says suddenly.

‘What?’ Emma asks confused and looks at it.

There is a cut on her palm. She hasn’t even noticed it is there. The moment she becomes aware of it, it starts to hurt. It is rather big, and it’s bleeding.

‘Your hand, it’s cut,’ he says, sounding genuinely worried. ‘Let me help.’

‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘It’s fine.’

She backs away from him, but he grabs her wrist with his hook.

‘No,’ he says seriously. ‘It’s not.’

He pulls her back towards him. She cannot quite figure him out. It irks her, especially since he can read her so well. She has to admit it, what he said on the beanstalk was right, she just doesn’t want him to get her. Not really. At least she wants to understand where he’s coming from, too, not just whether he’s lying or not.

‘Oh, so now you’re going to be a gentleman?’ she asks scathingly.

‘Giants can smell blood,’ he whispers, like he doesn’t want to wake them. ‘And I’m always a gentleman.’

Yeah, right.

He pulls the cork off a flask with his teeth and pours the liquid contents over her palm. It burns. It really, really hurts. She can’t suppress a squeal of pain.

‘What the hell is that?’

She wants to pull her hand away, but he holds it fast with his hook.

‘It’s rum. Bloody waste of it.’

He eyes the cut critically. Emma is still reeling from the pain. So nice, he could have at least warned her he was going to sanitise the wound. Then he takes his scarf from around his neck and ties it around her hand instead. The pain is now pretty dull, not so strong anymore.

‘Here’s the plan,’ he says while working. ‘Wait for the giant to fall asleep, and when he does we’ll sneak past him into his cave. It’s where the treasures are, and the compass lies.’

To tie up the dressing he uses his teeth again. He looks deeply into her eyes as he does it.

‘And then?’ she asks, torn between annoyance and something else.

‘Well, then we run like hell.’

He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. She has an idea why he had moved towards her when she had been interrogating him back at the camp.

‘I don’t have time for a giant to fall asleep,’ she says. ‘The powder Mulan gave us…’ He looks up from dressing her wound and gives her a little smile. ‘We need to use it. We gotta knock him out.’

‘That’s riskier.’

‘And waiting for a giant to fall asleep when we need him to?’

He smiles again. ‘Point taken.’ Well, he gave in surprisingly quickly. She sort of had prepared herself for a lengthier debate. ‘Ooh, you’re a tough lass. You’d make a hell of a pirate.’

He takes the powder from his satchel and hands it to her. There’s a tattoo on the inside of his arm; a heart with a dagger through it and a name written across.

‘Who’s Milah on the tattoo?’ she asks.

The smile slips off his face. He looks very grim now. Much more serious than she has seen him before. He shakes his sleeve down to hide the tattoo.

‘Someone from long ago,’ he says and walks away from her.

‘Where is she?’ she asks him.

‘She’s gone,’ he answers curtly, making it clear he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Emma has expected him to close up when things get too personal for him. Like the way she does. Like she expected him to react before on the beanstalk when she considered asking him about his own childhood. But then she suddenly understands something else.

‘Gold,’ she says. ‘Rumplestiltskin.’ Hook stops walking, but doesn’t turn around. ‘He took more than your hand from you, didn’t he?’

Now he turns around to face her. His face is darkened. He looks dangerous, angry, but also very sad. She isn’t afraid of him. Maybe she knows how to read him after all.

‘That’s why you wanna kill him.’

That makes actually much more sense.

He sighs. ‘For someone who’s never been in love, you’re quite perceptive, aren’t you?’

Emma thinks about Neal, the man who drove with her in her yellow bug. The one who had let her down in the end. She can’t help it. But then she only sees Hook looking at her questioningly.

‘Maybe I was once,’ she says in a faltering voice. She feels like she’s about to cry and she really doesn’t want that.

They’ve got things to do after all, not bringing up demons from their pasts.

*

‘You ready?’ Hook asks as he picks up a giant bone.

Emma is glad she’s sitting so far atop the statue, so she cannot really tell where he got it from nor what it is exactly.

‘Yeah,’ she calls down.

Her voice echoes slightly into the open doorway beside it, but she doubts it’s strong enough to travel all the way inside.

Hook bangs the bone against a gigantic shield three times, then looks up expectantly. They could totally live under there. How _big_ is this giant? Wait… had they considered… just how…?

He prepares to hit the shield again, when from within the castle a guttural roaring can be heard. The ground trembles like in an earthquake, and it is all Emma can do to hold onto the head of the statue so she doesn’t fall down.

Then the giant steps out. Well, he’s a little bigger… than…

‘Oh, damn it,’ she whispers.

Hook, who stands there staring up in awe and possibly fear, has noticed, too, that she cannot throw the powder into the giant’s face, because he is about twice as tall as the statue.

‘Oi!’ he calls loudly, drawing his attention towards him. ‘Hey! You big git!’

The giant looks down at him, growling dangerously. Hook steps out from behind the shield to stand exactly in front of him. He looks so tiny.

‘Yeah, you! Huh? You wanna kill a human? Huh?’ Emma is distracted from why she is up there. He seems a bit too eager to put himself in mortal danger. ‘You want to kill a human? Well, I’m the worst human around! Come on!’ She stands up on the statue’s shoulder and prepares the powder, just as Hook down there runs towards it. ‘Come on then!’

He is now directly between the statute and the giant, and the giant bends down to grab him. Emma throws the powder into his face, which is now on a level with hers. The giant looks as if he is about to sneeze, then topples over. The ground shakes again, more violently than before.

When everything is quiet again, Emma looks around.

‘Hook?’ She can’t see him anymore. Did the giant fall on him? ‘Hook!’

His head pops up next to the giant. She feels way too relieved about him being okay.

‘He’s out cold,’ he says matter-of-factly. Then he grins up at her as though he knows. ‘I don’t mean to upset you, Emma, but I think we make quite the team.’

She breathes heavily in and out, trying to get past the initial shock. He’s much too complacent. Though she can’t quite shake the feeling that he really thinks he is the worst human around.

‘Let’s go steal a compass,’ she sighs, and wonders how much time they’ve got left.

*

She’s glad he didn’t die. He’s sure of that. However guarded and wary she may be, she cares for him a bit. Just a little bit… but that doesn’t matter, does it? Why does he even want her to care for him? Is that important somehow? Hmm, maybe there is something to look forward to after he’d got his revenge? Though that’s a little bit too much to ask for, is it? Isn’t it? But why not? He can ask her… sometime later. Well, not too soon, because she will build her walls up even higher, and he doesn’t want that. He’s got walls, too, but not quite so high. He doesn’t really call them walls, he calls them faces, masks. He’s a mummer, a player, slipped into so many roles, he doesn’t even remember what’s real anymore.

Emma’s quite real. She may be reluctant to show her feelings whatever they are, but she is all there. And when he looks at her, he suddenly forgets what's been driving him all those years.

She walks ahead of him through a high corridor. Stacks of gold, pearls, and jewels are lined against the walls, but it seems like they’re just leading along the way with promises of grander riches yet.

‘They hoarded all of their greatest stolen treasures in here. Piles of jewels, and every room filled with coins…’

Killian’s voice trails off as he sees something that looks like a harpy or a lion or something that carries an upright cornucopia of sorts… filled with coins. He feels drawn towards it. His pirate’s heart beats quicker at the sight. He picks up a coin and sniffs it. It’s much more valuable than it seems at first glance. He wonders if it’s one of those coins that make you live forever, albeit as an undead, cursed to roam the seas for all eternity. Doesn’t sound like that much of a terrible fate to him. Isn’t that what he’d been doing for decades already? Well, at least he’s still alive.

‘Let’s get to it,’ Emma says. He ignores her for once. ‘The compass.’

Killian feels happy here among the treasure. Can’t they stay here for a little while? The climb and the attack really took quite a toll on him. _She_ didn’t almost get crushed by a giant.

‘What’s your rush?’

She looks very exasperated. He wonders why.

‘How long do you think magic knockout powder lasts?’

‘I’ve no clue,’ he says unconcerned.

‘ _That’s_ my rush,’ Emma clarifies.

He smiles. ‘Too right, lass. Come.’ He pockets the coin and points ahead of her. ‘Everything we need is right in front of us.’

Emma follows him, as he walks towards the end of the corridor. It leads to a door, which opens up into a larger room where almost the entire floor is heaped with treasure; gold, of course, but also silver, porcelain, precious materials he cannot even name.

Killian is in awe as he climbs down the giant steps into the treasure room proper. She’s unimpressed.

‘They kill all the giant housekeepers, too?’ she asks. ‘How're we gonna find a compass in this mess?’

‘By looking. Start searching,’ he says, gesturing to her to do it as he reaches to pocket a ruby. ‘I wonder how much treasure we could carry down the beanstalk,’ he says musingly as he examines the precious stone to evaluate its worth. Emma throws him a disapproving look. ‘In addition to the compass, of course.’

After all he wants to get to Storybrooke, too. How is he supposed to do that without the compass? Also, he really does want to help her, but that fact has eluded him and obviously her for a moment.

Soon, they come across a human skeleton on the ground.

‘The hell?’ she says.

‘That,’ says Killian, reading the name near the hilt of the dead man’s sword, ‘would be Jack.’

‘As in Jack…?’

‘Giant killer,’ he confirms.

‘With that toothpick?’ she asks, noticing the sword, too.

 ‘Well, it packs quite a wallop,’ he says, stepping back. ‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’ Emma jumps towards him, grabs him, and pulls him towards her.

‘It’s about bloody time,’ Killian says, and partly because he’s really happy she touches him, partly because he’s a bit astonished, he hugs her back.

With some difficulty Emma extricates herself from his embrace and points at a place behind him about the height of his ankles.

‘It’s a tripwire,’ she says and then points up at the ceiling, where a cage hangs ready to drop itself onto the unsuspecting visitor. ‘ _Quite_ a security system.’

‘Well, that’s a plausible excuse for grabbing me,’ he concedes, ‘but next time don’t stand on ceremony.’

She looks a bit ruffled, after their little scuffle. Awkwardly he tries to put her hair and collar back in order.

‘Let’s find the compass and go home,’ she says firmly and looks him deeply in the eyes to stress her point.

She’s got green eyes, he notices, like the sea at first light. He smiles, turns around, and gestures for her to proceed over the tripwire.

She does the same. ‘After you,’ she says, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach her ocean eyes.

Of course, she wants to keep him in sight. He understands that. There’s no trust between them. Well, she doesn’t trust him. He nods and goes on ahead, wondering if he trusts her.

*

There is just so much stuff in here! Not just gold, but toppled over pillars that serve absolutely no purpose, vases filled with coins, and other things. It also makes her wonder what the hell the giant does with all that treasure. He can’t spend it on anything, he can’t buy food with it. What does the giant eat? Oh, okay, she’s not sure she wants to know the answer to that.

‘So,’ she says, ‘it’s just… in here somewhere?’

‘Allegedly,’ Hook replies.

She doesn’t even know where to start looking.

‘Give me a boost, would you, love?’

She looks at him. He stands next to a cage on top of which more stuff is lying. He clearly wants to get up there to have a look.

‘So, I can’t see what you’re pocketing?’ she says, walking over to him. ‘No way. You give _me_ a boost.’

Hook holds her up and looks at her earnestly. ‘Try something new, darling. It’s called trust.’

She doesn’t know what to think of him. One moment he’s jokey and awkward, intrusive and downright creepy, the next he’s like this. It’s not helpful that his eyes are such a pretty shade of blue. She feels a little bit bad now, because she knows he’s serious, but only a little.

‘We do it side by side and fast,’ she suggests quickly, maybe to appease him. ‘Who knows how long before the…’

Then she hears a dull clanking sound all the way back from where they had entered the castle. When the giant’s feet touch the ground, everything shakes. He’s certainly running.

‘Someone’s up,’ Hook notes.

Both look at the door through which inevitably any minute now the giant will appear. As the ground keeps shaking, Hook grabs her shoulder to steady her. But soon that isn’t enough because things fall down from everywhere. If this keeps up they will be buried under all that treasure.

‘Quickly!’ Hook says. ‘Get under something!’

She assumes he means something fixed like a doorway.

They run away from the middle of the room where there is no treasure that can fall on them. Hook is closer to the wall when the giant enters, jumps down the length of the staircase, and then charges towards them as though he just wants to crush them under his feet. Chunks of rock fall from the ceiling and bury Hook under them.

‘Hook?’ Emma screams in panic, but receives no answer.

Or if he answered, she didn’t hear him, because the giant runs towards her, the only human left in sight now, and picks her up.

He lifts her up to be on a level with his face. It’s actually a gentle face. Not right now obviously, because it’s screwed up with hatred. He’s got curly brown hair, tied back in a ponytail, and wears red robes, which give him the look of a very hairy Buddha, a very tense, bearded Buddha.

‘I’m not what you think!’ Emma screams. She has to screw up her strength to get the words out, because the giant’s grip isn’t exactly relaxed.

‘You’re a thief, and you poisoned me, so yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re exactly what I think.’ He begins to squeeze tighter.

‘No. Look, you have a compass. I need it!’

‘I don’t care what you need.’

There is almost no air inside her. She feels light-headed, but she can’t give up now.

‘No, for my son! To save my son!’ she says imploringly. ‘Don’t you have a family?’ She slaps against his thumb to ease his grip somehow. It has absolutely no effect.

‘No,’ he says slowly, ‘because humans killed them all!’

Emma’s vision blurs as he tightens his grip even more. With her remaining strength, she leans forward and bites deep into his thumb.

With a yell of pain, the giant lets go of her, Emma first lands in his lap and then after a lengthier fall thankfully on his foot. She starts running desperately back towards the middle of the room, trying to ignore the enraged giant’s heavy steps behind her, just behind her. She has to be quick.

She jumps over the tripwire and grabs Jack’s sword. Just as the giant comes running around the corner towards her, she slashes it through the air and cuts the wire. The giant hesitates a moment, staring at the sword as though afraid of it, then he hears the cage falling from the ceiling. He only has time to look up before it slams him into the ground, effectively trapping him inside.

Emma runs over to him, the sword still in her hand.

‘Nice security system,’ she comments. ‘Efficient.’

She sticks the sword in through the bars and towards his eye. He flinches back.

‘No. No! No! No! No!’ he cries in panic, shrinks back from her inside the cage, and screws up his face.

‘I can tell by your face you know what this is,’ Emma notes calmly. ‘Let me guess. It’s dipped in some sort of poison.’

He opens his eyes again and blinks at her.

‘You have a compass,’ she continues fervently. ‘I need it.’

‘You’re gonna kill me either way,’ he says in a contemptuous voice. ‘Go ahead, kill me.’ He closes his eyes.

It doesn’t look like he wants to die, not like Hook who seems to revel in life-threatening situations, more like he has resigned himself to his fate, because he’s learned not to expect anything else.

‘You don’t know me,’ Emma says. She feels a bit sorry for the giant now.

‘I know your kind,’ he says with a bit more passion. ‘They massacred us and destroyed our beans.’

‘I heard it the other way.’

‘Because the victors get to tell the story.’ Emma takes a step forward and makes as if to stab him with the sword. ‘Okay!’ he says loudly, squeezing his eyes shut again. ‘Stop! Here.’ He pushes something golden through the gap between cage and floor. It’s a compass. _The_ compass!

She goes to pick it up.

‘See?’ he says quietly again. ‘I’m not the bad guy.’

Emma squeezes the compass in her hand happily. The quest is over. They are one step closer to getting to Storybrooke. She walks back towards the giant, points the sword at him, then lowers it. The giant looks at her in surprise.

‘Maybe you are telling the truth,’ she says dismissively. ‘Doesn’t really matter. I have to go. Are there any more of you?’

She raises the sword.

‘No,’ he says dully, ‘I’m alone.’

She puts the sword down again, feeling sad. Then she sees something lying next to him between the bars of the cage. It’s like an amulet, which he wears around his neck.

‘What’s this?’ she asks. It almost looks like… ‘Is this a bean? Can this make a portal?’

He looks at it, too. ‘Not anymore. It was destroyed like the rest of them. I wear it as a reminder… a reminder that you’re all killers,’ he says in a rough voice.

‘You’re wrong,’ she tells him and walks away.

Behind her something explodes. In fact, it really is the giant breaking apart the cage and standing up. Bits of wood and metal soar over her head, as she cowers in fear. He’s much closer to her now, she will not be able to escape quickly enough this time. And she also doesn’t have another escape plan.

He stands towering over her, and Emma’s only weapon is the sword, which really looks like a toothpick compared to him. He turns away from her, picks up a giant rock, but instead of throwing it at her, he hauls it away. Where the rock has been, she can see a man-sized hole in the wall. Through it sunlight is streaming into the room. It looks like a way out.

She turns to stare up at the giant, who hasn’t moved towards her.

‘Go!’ he says.

‘Why?’

He pushes a strand of his hair behind his ear, looking a bit sheepish. ‘Because you could’ve killed me… and you didn’t.’ Emma stares at him, not sure if she’s hearing right. ‘You get one favour. Now go, before I change my mind!’ he shouts.

Emma doesn’t need telling twice. She turns to leave. Then she remembers something, or rather someone.

‘Actually,’ she says, turning around, well aware she’s pushing her luck, ‘I get two favours.’

Maybe the giant is too surprised at her nerve to kill her on the spot. But he really doesn’t look like he would anymore. He would have squashed her before, she’s sure of it, but right now he really looks like a gentle giant.

‘What?’

‘Well, the way I see it,’ she continues, ‘I could’ve killed you twice. The poison and when you were knocked out. I didn’t.’

She isn’t sure that’s quite right, but he seems to buy it.

‘What do you want?’ he asks darkly.

Emma smiles at him.

‘Well, I didn’t exactly get here alone. My… friend got buried under some rocks when you attacked us.’ The giant looks alarmed as though he, too, had forgotten about Hook. ‘All I ask is,’ she sighs, ‘can you please not kill him and let him go after twelve hours?’

‘Why don’t you just go get him now?’ the giant asks suspiciously.

‘I will see if he’s still alive under there, but I don’t want him to follow me right away. I’m not sure he’s trustworthy.’

‘That doesn’t sound like much of a friend,’ the giant notes. ‘Maybe when I let him go, he’s gonna kill me?’

‘No, he won’t. He didn’t try to kill you before either. You would have killed him though, wouldn’t you?’

The giant looks sheepish again. ‘Where is he?’

 

**3**

Emma moves one of the rocks to the side. Underneath it is a sort of cave. Hook lies there, not quite conscious.

‘Hook,’ she says probingly.

He becomes alert. ‘Emma! Have you got it?’

She nods, then holds out her hand to help him crawl out. He’s laughing wheezily.

‘You are bloody brilliant,’ he exults. ‘Amazing.’

When he’s clear of the rubble, she can see he’s unhurt.

‘May I see it?’ he asks politely. ‘The compass.’ She takes it from her pocket and shows it to him. ‘It’s more beautiful than legend,’ he whispers, almost reverently. When he goes to reach for it, Emma pulls it away and pockets it again. He doesn’t say anything, but smiles, maybe a bit embarrassed. ‘Come. Let’s go.’

He holds out his hand to her. After some hesitation Emma takes it, then snaps the shackles the giant has told her to use around his wrist, chaining him to the wall. She quickly moves several steps away, so he doesn’t get the chance to grab her.

‘What are you doing?’ he says quietly. He stands up. ‘What are you doing?’ His voice is hoarse. He looks absolutely stunned. Maybe she is wrong.

‘Hook, I…’ she breathes heavily, feeling a little dizzy, because she really doesn’t know. She looks at the ground in embarrassment. ‘I c… I can’t…’

‘Emma, look at me,’ he whispers. ‘Have I told you lie? I brought you here. I risked my own safety to help you. The compass is in your hand. Why do this to me now?’

She feels so bad. Never before has she been so torn about a person. He is a pirate and he lies, but she knows he didn’t lie to her again, not after she found him out, certainly not since the beanstalk.

‘I can’t take a chance that I’m wrong about you.’ Now that she has the compass, she can’t have him around. If he betrays them to Cora, if he takes the compass from them and brings it to her, everything is lost. ‘I’m sorry.’

And she really is. She wishes she could be sure about him either way. No, that’s not true. She really wishes she could be sure that he will never betray her again.

‘You’re sorry? You’re sorry?! I got you here! I got you the compass!’ he yells.

‘ _I_ got the compass,’ she clarifies, just as loudly.

‘Are you just gonna leave me here to die?’ he asks. ‘Have that beast to eat me, to crush my bones?’

‘He’s not a beast,’ she says angrily. ‘And you’re _not_ gonna die. I just need a head start. That’s all.’

As she leaves, she hears him screaming behind her, yanking at the chain.

‘Swan! SWAN! SWAN!!’

Even though she can’t quite tell herself if her reason is she doesn’t trust him around the compass or herself around him, right now Emma’s simply glad she left the irascible man behind.

*

By the time she started her downward climb, the night was halfway done. Soon sunbeams are becoming visible over the horizon. Emma can see so far, but she has to hurry on. There is still no exact way for her to say how much time they spend up there, but she feels she doesn’t have much of it left.

The ground is not so very far now, she’s beginning to be able to see the three people who are waiting for her there, but she can’t look down for too long. She still is so far up, the sight makes her queasy.

Suddenly the beanstalk shudders. She feels a magical surge running upwards, rushing over her body, nearly dislocating her, but she manages to hang on for dear life. The ten hours are up. Mulan has begun to chop down the stalk. Emma continues to descend, hoping she will not fall down.

Then she hears the voices. One of them is Mary Margaret’s, her mother’s. She’s screaming angrily, but at least Mulan appears to have stopped hacking at the stalk. Emma can see the two of them are engaged in a struggle.

‘Stop!’ she shouts, hoping they can hear her and falls more than she jumps the rest of the way. In her haste her foot becomes entangled in a twine, and she lands awkwardly in a heap on the ground.

‘Emma!’ Mary Margaret leaps up first and hurries over to her. ‘You okay?’ She helps her up, even though she really looks the worse for wear, covered in dust and straw from rolling on the ground with Mulan.

‘Two earthquakes,’ Emma admits, ‘and a jump from a beanstalk. I think my brain’s still rattling around a little.’

Mulan is up on her feet again, too. ‘I did what she ordered,’ she says to Mary Margaret, ‘nothing more than that.’ Then she looks at Emma. ‘Did you get it?’

‘Yep,’ Emma says and pulls the compass from her pocket to show it to them.

Aurora looks around. ‘Wh… where’s Hook?’

Of course, she would be the first to notice his absence. She had been the only one not to distrust him from the get-go, not that that feeling had actually been justified.

‘He’s detained,’ Emma says breathlessly. ‘Go, get your stuff. We got ten hours before he follows us.’

She should probably tell Mulan to cut down the beanstalk after all, but she really doesn’t want him to die. Mulan and Aurora follow her orders and begin to pack up their camp.

‘What?’ Mary Margaret asks. ‘How?’

‘I got a friend looking after him till then.’ And she’s sure Hook and the giant are really gonna hit it off.

Mary Margaret suddenly grabs her arm and pulls her away a little. She’s still panting, maybe not only from the fight with Mulan. She looks furious or at least madly disappointed.

‘You told her to cut it down?’

‘Yes, I couldn’t risk…’

Mary Margaret holds her by the shoulders and shakes her a little. She looks deeply into her eyes.

‘We… go back _together_ ,’ she says fervently. ‘That is the _only_ way. Do you understand?’

She looks like a mother now. _Her_ mother. Emma feels weirdly moved. She likes Mary Margaret so much. Just not like a mother, like a dear friend. But Mary Margaret really thinks of her as her daughter. Emma pulls her into a hug.

‘Yeah,’ says Emma, maybe feeling a bit like a little girl.

‘Good,’ Mary Margaret breathes and pats her on the back. ‘Now.’ She clears her throat. ‘Let’s go get that dust from Cora.’

‘Yeah,’ says Emma, for once letting herself feel safe in her mother’s embrace, ‘and go home.’

*

Killian is bloody hungry. He doesn’t remember his last meal, but it must have been long before he and the bloody Swan girl started their climb on the bloody beanstalk. They’ve been up here for more than three hours before she left him, and now it’s afternoon already again. It was probably a good twenty-four hours ago.

There’s nothing to eat here. Killian pulls the treasure he has collected from his pocket, a coin and a ruby, and tosses them away. Whether or not he will get out of here, he doesn’t need that rubbish. He needs the compass. He needs some way to get out of here, not just the castle, but this whole world. Maybe being around the beautiful girl had distracted him from his purpose for a while, when he had day-dreamed about a life with her, but he had been foolish. She would never want someone like him. She needs someone upstanding, someone proper, not a bloody lying pirate. Technically she’s a princess after all. What even is he compared to that? He doesn’t need someone like her anyway, he doesn’t need anybody. His goal has always been, find the crocodile, and rip out his spine or something like that, and then… he doesn’t care about then, he can die after or during for all he cares, he can even fail, if he manages to snuff it at least. There is no life after that and there doesn’t have to be. Killian drains his flask of rum in two gulps. It had been almost empty anyway, because he used most of it on the Swan girl’s wound.

The giant approaches him quietly, but he is so vast, Killian still hears his footsteps.

‘Time’s almost up, pirate,’ he says. He sounds sulky, like a child, but Killian doesn’t care about the bloody giant.

‘I wasn’t aware that I’m _your_ prisoner, giant,’ he says cynically.

‘Well, the girl, your friend, she told me to let you go after twelve hours.’

‘Her name’s Emma. And she’s not my friend,’ Killian growls.

The giant makes a sound of surprise and sits down in front of him.

‘Oh, well, she called you her friend,’ he says.

Killian looks up. ‘She did?’

‘Yeah.’ The giant nods. ‘But she also said she doesn’t trust you. And she wasn’t sure whether you survived at all. Can’t tell if she was worried about that. She did ask me not to kill you though.’

‘Well, that’s right nice of her,’ Killian says darkly.

The giant looks at him quietly for some time. After a while, Killian can’t stand it anymore.

‘What?’ he asks aggressively. Actually more aggressively than he means to, because what’s to stop the giant from stamping on him right now, when he antagonises him so much?

‘Are you gonna kill me, if I let you go?’

Note the “if” instead of “when”, he thinks glumly. Well, if he starves me long enough, I might be able to slip through the manacle, but then I certainly can’t get to Storybrooke anymore.

‘No,’ he sighs, ‘I’m not gonna kill you. That is… do you have something to eat?’

‘Why?’ the giant sounds alarmed.

‘Well, I’m not going to eat _you_ ,’ he says irritably, ‘but I am rather hungry.’

‘I don’t have anything to eat for you,’ the giant says slowly.

‘All right,’ says Killian wearily. He notices something hanging around the giant’s neck. Maybe he’s wrong but… ‘Is that a bean?’

‘Yeah,’ the giant replies guardedly. ‘But it’s dried-up. It’s useless…’

‘May I have it then if it’s so useless?’ Killian asks.

He would like to get _something_ out of this, and a symbol is close enough. No spoils in forms of coins or rubies, but a powerless magic bean, representing his own deficiency. One almost like the one that had started all this bloody mess in the first place, and the useless bean will be there when it all ends. Moreover a magic bean is a magic bean, even if it is dried-up. Who says nobody will be able to get it to work again?

‘Why would you want it?’

‘Because…’ Killian thinks of a compelling argument that isn’t the truth and only comes up with one that will probably get him killed right away. ‘If you give it to me then it’s like a token of the trust between me and you that we won’t kill each other once you set me free.’

Otherwise I will not kill you either, because I will not manage to, chained to the wall, without a sword, a distraction, and armed with just my bloody hook, he thinks bitterly.

The giant looks at him, and Killian wonders if he can see through the major flaw in his logic.

‘All right,’ he says, pulling the string that holds the bean over his head, and tosses it at Killian.

Killian removes the bean from the round contraption to which it is pinned and pockets it.

‘Ta,’ he says.

The giant gets to his feet. ‘You can go now,’ he announces, throwing a large key at Killian’s feet, and backs away.

Killian picks it up and with enormous difficulty manages to fit it into the lock just below his wrist. The lock clicks, and the manacle falls to the ground.

He stands up, looks up at the giant, and grins, despite his fatigue. The giant presses himself against the wall as though afraid of him. Killian is almost amused by this. He walks closer to the giant who looks at him in genuine fear.

Killian raises his hook. The giant squeezes his eyes shut.

‘Well, thanks again, old bean,’ he says friendly.

The giant opens his eyes. Killian puts his hook to his head in a mock salute. Then he gives a little bow, and leaves in direction of the front door. Going down the beanstalk will be easier than up, he hopes.

*

Well, it isn’t easier. By the time he’s halfway down, it starts to rain. The tendrils have become slippery, and it is all he can do to hold onto them without losing his grip and plummeting to his death. There are many ways he’s prepared and even happy to go, but this isn’t one of them. Night has fallen, it is pitch dark around, especially below, and he can’t tell how much he has left to climb. He needs a rest, but there is no way to rest here.

He keeps climbing, climbing, slipping down, thinking about the Swan girl and how she betrayed him. About her long blonde flowing hair, the bright green eyes, her intoxicating smile. Well, it’s all been wrong. He has allowed himself to be fooled. He’s allowed himself to be distracted. Maybe it is a good thing she betrayed him, opened his eyes to what is important, really important to him, the thing that keeps him going, breathing.

The ground is near, he can see it now. Killian lets go and jumps the rest of the way. It’s still pretty high up, and he almost falls on his buttocks. The ground is quite squishy, but he manages to land on his feet.

‘My dear captain,’ someone says from behind him as he straightens up, and for a moment Killian feels real fear creep up into his chest. ‘It seems you’ve been on quite an adventure.’ Her voice sounds mockingly soft, friendly, but only almost. ‘The compass, please,’ she says much colder now.

Killian composes himself before turning around.

‘Yes, that,’ he says. ‘Well, matters grew complicated.’

She’s holding up her umbrella. While he’s talking, she retracts her outstretched hand and instead clutches it around the handle, tighter than absolutely necessary as though she wishes nothing better than closing her fingers around his throat; no, his heart.

‘It’s eluded me for the moment. The details of the affair are a bit of a bore.’

‘Really?’ she says, smiling dangerously. ‘Stealing my protection spell and climbing the beanstalk without me might seem like a bore to you. But to me it’s a betrayal.’

‘I was gonna bring it to you,’ he lies easily. ‘Our agreement remains.’ And after all, he doesn’t have anyone else to rely on. He can expect her to betray him, too, but maybe not right away, because she knows he will rub it in her face. ‘We are going to Storybrooke together. I’ll get it back.’

She shakes her head dismissively. ‘I don’t have time for your games. I’ve crossed through too many worlds to be brought short at the brink of success.’

Killian thinks that he might just have been to a few more worlds than her.

‘Who was it who bested you?’ she asks. It sounds as if she wants to hear something amusing.

‘The Swan girl,’ says Killianser, hoping she doesn’t notice. ‘Emma. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.’

She chuckles. ‘No, it won’t.’ Then she grows more serious. ‘You chose her…’ Killian thinks that _he_ might have, but she certainly didn’t chose him, ‘and the consequences of that decision.’

He hears the threat in her voice; one that he both wants and doesn’t want to hear.

‘Oh,’ he says in a low voice, maybe a bit seductive, but really he mocks her. ‘Are you gonna kill me now?’ Cora is stony faced, looking up at him. He can’t tell whether she is worried or really doesn’t care. ‘Go ahead! Try!’

Cora smiles and squares her shoulders, as if a pleasant shiver is running down her spine. Maybe she likes that, imagining to hurt him. Maybe she likes doing it, and he just doesn’t remember.

‘So brave,’ she says sardonically. Killian stares at her, still unsure whether he wants to see a certain side of her. Her next words put him at ease for a second. ‘No, I’m not going to kill you. I have something far more satisfying in mind. I’m going to leave you here, with your thirst for revenge unquenched, while I complete our journey without you.’

Killian finds himself hoping she would torture him to death instead. His face hurts a bit when he forces it into an easy smile.

‘There’s no need to be rash,’ he says in a low voice again, trying to seduce more than before. ‘We can… discuss this.’

He takes a few steps forward, until he’s right in front of her. He looks down at her, smiling in that way he knows she likes, thinking what she might do to him if he kisses her now.

‘Your pretty face buys you a lot,’ Cora says, completely unmoved, ‘but not my time. It’s too valuable.’

‘I can do this,’ Killian says with fervour, because he knows he’s right and because he doesn’t want to be abandoned again. ‘I can get it back. You need me.’

That last part is a lie. He knows she doesn’t. Nobody does. Everybody has something, while he has nothing and needs _someone’s_ help to get anywhere near Storybrooke.

She chuckles again, and it makes him choke. If Emma hadn’t betrayed him, he wouldn’t be here now.

‘No, I don’t,’ Cora says, sounding way too happy about that, and moves away from him. ‘You’ve had your chance. Now it’s my turn to do this… the right way.’

Killian charges forward, his hook raised. It is his very last resort, futile. Before he can reach her, she's disappeared in a cloud of smoke. He lands face-down on the wet ground, completely alone again. The fire of his wrath burned low, he realises how cold he is all of a sudden and starts to shiver violently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and please leave a comment if you can spare the time!
> 
> Thanks again!


	3. Dealing with the Queen of Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The heroes are still trying to find a way out of the Enchanted Forest.  
> Cora and Hook try to thwart them.
> 
>  
> 
> _Cora drove the end of her staff into the ground. A huge surge of magic flew out of its tip and rose into the air, spanning out far over them, and a huge portion of the land, not only the island they were standing on, but also part of the mainland across from it, was beneath her spell like under an umbrella. The curse, steadily approaching, moved over and on either side of the shield, never touching the part of the land that lay protected underneath the bubble._

**1**

Even if he’s still more used to navigating at sea than finding his way on land, he has picked up a thing or two about tracking during his time stuck on Neverland and even here in the past twenty-eight years he’s mostly forgotten. Like this he manages to almost catch up with them and follow in their path. It may have taken him a bit longer than someone with better skills, but maybe that’s good. He isn’t sure yet whether he wants them to notice him, and the distance makes it very unlikely for them to do so.

He makes camp when they do and manages to salvage some berries, which he remembers aren’t poisonous. From where he’s hiding in the underbrush, he imagines he can nearly see a sheen of the Swan girl’s blonde head, and even though he has sworn to himself to stay awake, the fatigue he has been ignoring for the last two days finally takes over, and he falls asleep.

In his dream, he’s back on board the Jolly Roger. The sun is shining into his eyes, the breeze ruffling his hair. He’s standing alone at the wheel and, as he turns it, he sees that he still has both hands. That also means he knows he’s dreaming, but he doesn’t care. So far he hasn’t seen anyone else on the ship, so when someone comes up from the captain’s quarters, he fully expects it to be Milah. The woman who steps into the sunlight isn’t her though; she’s much smaller, slighter. The sun is shining brightly, and she’s just a silhouette against the clear blue sky. He calls out to her, and she turns towards him. He thinks she’s smiling at him, but he never gets a good enough look.

When he wakes up, he doesn’t know where he is. His stomach is rumbling, and his back and neck hurt, but that isn’t what roused him. Just in time, he sees one of the people from the safe haven run towards him. He’s still so drowsy, at first he doesn’t understand why this should confuse him. But while he’s slow on the uptake, at least his instincts are as sharp as ever. In a flash he’s on his feet, the next moment the severed head of the dead man rolls on the ground. Yes, the man had already been dead before he cut his head off with his hook. Cora has killed them all earlier, so she has to be the one making them do this now.

Does she know that he is here? Does she want to kill him after all?

No, that can’t be it.

He hears the women screaming. Swan. He cannot hear her words, because they are too far away, and before he has a moment to decide what to do, _if_ he’s going to help them, three more dead people attack him. Killian can fight very well with a sword, but luckily he doesn’t have to rely on it to defend himself. He buries his hook in the chest of one of the attacking corpses, kicks the next one aside, and hurls the first one into the third assailant. All three tumble down the slope he’s been camping next to. At the bottom they scramble to their feet and begin to climb back up towards him once more.

Killian hears a good dozen of them behind him. He doesn’t stop to think how many people had been living in the safe haven. The only way to kill them is to take off their heads and break their limbs. Well, they are dead anyway, but like this they seem to stop attacking. When he’s done, he doesn’t hear Emma or Snow White anymore, but he sees at quite a distance still, Mulan and Aurora running away from their camp. Mulan is felled by an animated corpse on the ground who grabs her by the ankle. Aurora, the princess, runs off as two more of them approach her menacingly. To him it looks as if they are being ordered to follow her, which they are of course. They grab the princess who screams her head off, silence her, and carry her off. They don’t harm her, but Mulan, still on the ground fighting, doesn’t notice her being abducted.

Killian though, he knows where they are taking her and follows, because he has an idea on how to win back someone’s trust.

*

The voice enters her brain as though in a dream.

‘Wake up… wake up… Come one, sweetheart, wake up. Wake up.’ Aurora can see the blurry outline of a man’s face. Sleepily she tries to get it into focus. ‘Wake up!’ says the man and grabs her arm. ‘On your feet, hurry.’

As he pulls her up from the ground she recognises him. It’s the pirate, Hook. The one Emma left up on the beanstalk. Now he’s back down here in her cell, which can only mean one thing.

‘No!’ Aurora pulls her arm away, frightened. ‘No, are you here to kill me?’

‘If I were here for that then waking you first might not be the best course of action.’

As Aurora still struggles to make sense of his words, he drags his hook sharply across her manacles, breaking them. The sensation, the sound startle her.

‘So what? Did Cora send you here?’ she asks.

‘Cora has not idea I’m here,’ he interrupts her as he takes the ruined chains off her.

‘I don’t… I don’t understand,’ she admits, confused. Now freed she can step away from him. The dark and sinister man frightens her still.

‘Well, I know you’re sleepy,’ he says not very friendly. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m setting you _free_.’

By now she knows he’s not a nice man, but she still had been worried about him when she heard Emma had left him behind. Now that he’s here, she’s not sure what to think of him at all.

‘What is this?’ she says angrily, braver than she feels. ‘Some sort of pirate’s ruse?’

‘Cora’s denied me passage to Storybrooke and my vengeance,’ he says angrier than her. ‘And now I’m gonna deny her her wishes, starting with the compass. In pirate terms you might say, I’m firing a shot across my enemy’s bow.’

‘You’d risk your life to break in here, all so you could thwart Cora?’ Aurora asks disbelievingly.

‘I don’t like being double-crossed,’ he replies. ‘Now go.’

He steps aside to let her pass. Aurora looks at him for a while. She isn’t sure what to make of this. It is certainly brave, but maybe too brave for a pirate, for a man like him; she can’t help thinking there is more to this. But she feels oddly empty, like she’s nothing inside her, nothing to pull strength from. It’s so cold here, isn’t it?

‘Thank you,’ she whispers.

She walks past him, but he takes hold of her arm to stop her, and she turns around again.

‘You can thank me by doing me one favour.’

Aurora pulls her arm from his grip. She thinks he might be tricking her after all, pretending to let her go, only to capture her again later. She can hardly run in that dress, and he is taller, stronger, and faster than her. She’d have no chance.

‘What?’ she asks warily, expecting him to say something awful, to show her his true colours.

‘Give Emma a message.’ The way he says it, and his face looks makes her wonder. ‘Tell her that the deal still stands. If she provides me passage back to her realm, I swear… I will help her find that dust that opens the portal.’

‘You really want to assist us?’ Aurora wonders aloud, thinking that he might be honest about this.

‘It hurts Cora and helps me, of course I do. Now go.’

He looks like the helpless man they found back in the safe haven now. She is so confused and can’t form a clear thought. Looking back around at him to make sure he doesn’t stop her after all, Aurora leaves the cell.

*

While watching over Mary Margaret’s sleep, Emma must have dozed off, too. She wakes when she feels her mother’s hand moving inside hers. Mary Margaret’s eyes are open, but she still looks dazed.

‘Hey,’ Emma says softly. ‘Are you okay?’

Mary Margaret looks at their conjoined hands. Then she suddenly flinches, as though hit by something, and moves away.

‘What… what happened?’ Emma says startled, looking for the source that causes Mary Margaret’s anxiety. ‘What are you doing?’

Her mother jumps up and scrambles back to the stone on which Mulan had prepared the poppy dust.

‘I’m looking for more powder,’ she replies, frantically moving the stone as though hoping to find some leftover from it beside it.

‘Well, I’m pretty sure we’re out of that. What _happened_?’

‘No!’ Mary Margaret says, and she’s sounding on the verge of tears, speaking very fast. ‘I have to go back in, he’s all alone.’

Her words drive into Emma’s heart like a knife. ‘Henry?’ she says, now feeling equally anxious. ‘What? Is he okay?’

‘No. David. He went under a sleeping spell so he could see me, thought that my kiss would wake him, but it didn’t, and now he’s trapped,’ she says in one breath.

‘Okay, slow down,’ says Emma quickly, while her mother is kneeling on the ground before her in a disconsolate heap and sobs. ‘David is trapped in there?’

Mary Margaret gets up, pretty much ignoring Emma, and sits down on the tree trunk, still looking far away into the distance as though David is there, as if she isn’t exactly speaking to her daughter but to herself. ‘No. I have to get back. There’s only one way to help him.’

‘True love’s kiss,’ says Emma.

‘Yes, but,’ Mary Margaret chokes out, still panicking, ‘it won’t work in there.’ Finally she looks up at Emma and grabs her hands. ‘We have to get back, if we don’t…’

‘We will,’ Emma says with emphasis, looking deep into her mother’s eyes. ‘We will.’ They already have several reasons for having to go back, this is just one more to fortify her resolve. And after all, the only thing left are the ashes.

Mary Margaret takes deep calming breaths, but is still so agitated her voice sounds broken.

‘Now you’re so sure?’ she bursts out.

‘Yes,’ Emma says gently, holding the gaze, trying to transfer her own certainty into her friend, her mother. ‘You told me to have faith, and now I’m telling you, we’ll make it back.’ Mary Margaret’s more composed now. She’s still looking desperate, but Emma can see a flicker of hope in her green eyes. ‘Okay?’ she says. ‘Did you get the information?’

Mary Margaret nods. ‘It’s Rumplestiltskin. He said the key to stopping her is in his jail cell.’

‘Okay,’ says Emma. ‘Then let’s go get it. Come on, get your stuff.’ She taps Mary Margaret lightly on the thigh to get her moving and helps her up. ‘Come on.’

While her mother is getting her bow and quiver, Emma pats her jacket pocket. She freezes, pats the other pocket, and looks around on the ground, everywhere.

‘No,’ she says, panic gripping her heart, making her stomach roil.

‘What?’ Mary Margaret says, again the calmer one.

Emma looks at her, her horror rising, as she realises how lost they are now. ‘The compass is gone. And so is Mulan.’

*

Cora enters the cell with an air of someone who’s lost something, as though she knows there is something wrong. She hastily walks over to the place where she had Aurora chained on the floor, but before she can even look properly and decide that the princess is truly gone, Killian speaks up, stepping out of the shadows.

‘Looking for someone?’

Cora whirls around, sees him, and sighs. ‘Oh, don’t tell me, you were _dumb_ enough to let her go.’

Killian shrugs. ‘She was never gonna give you what you wanted anyway.’

Cora gives a short mirthless laugh and looks at him almost pityingly. Killian knows she thinks he’s stupid and maybe he is, but not quite as stupid as she believes.

‘So, you freed her… and stuck around for the petty satisfaction of seeing me suffer?’

‘Ooh,’ says Killian, ‘watching you suffer is a tempting motivation, but it wasn’t that.’ It would have been a nice change to have her suffer instead of him for once.

‘Well then, you must have a death wish,’ Cora says and laughs that little laugh again, like she’s actually sad.

She pushes her hand towards him, and Killian feels the force of her magic hit him, fling him back against the rough cave wall, knocking the wind out of him. Before he has a chance to recover, pieces of rock snake themselves around his wrists and ankles, making it so as if he’s a part of it, as if the cave had grown around him, rendering him almost entirely immobile. His shoulders begin to ache as he’s pressed tightly against the uneven surface, his arms bent back at an uncomfortable angle. He’s not frightened though, not at all, because Cora hasn’t got a clue just how devious he can be.

She walks towards him, never taking her eyes off his face until she’s right in front of him. It takes Killian a lot of effort not to make her notice how much discomfort he’s in. She moves her hand down to his left arm, puts her fingers around the hook, and expertly twists it, removing it from its socket. He thinks, maybe even remembers now, she’s done it before.

As she looks at him again, she smiles her wicked little smile, the conspiratorial one she wears when she’s about to inflict pain, the one he remembers from another place, too. With the hook she moves his waistcoat and shirt slightly to the side to reveal a bit more of his chest. She does that almost lovingly. Killian feels shivers down his back and not in a pleasant way.

She looks up into his face, and when she doesn’t detect any fear in it, she appears to feel the need to clarify.

‘You know I have to kill you,’ she says with a little regret in her voice, like she really doesn’t want to, but she simply _has_ to punish her plaything for misbehaving.

‘You should try thanking me,’ Killian snaps back with more hostility that he means to.

‘Oh, really?’ says Cora, amused again, glad that he can entertain her still. ‘Why is that?’

‘Because I brought you a gift,’ he says. ‘It’s in the satchel.’ He gestures at it with his head, the only body part he can move.

Cora glances at the satchel he carries. She doesn’t move an inch, the hook still at his chest, and if she goes through with it now, it’s really going to be very messy, because the hook is no longer enchanted.

‘What is it?’ she asks suspiciously.

‘Customarily surprise is part of the fun of gift giving,’ Killian replies spitefully. ‘Open it.’ He’s not in the mood for niceties.

Cora still doesn’t take her eyes off him, as she slices the strap of the satchel with his hook. She opens it and looks inside. A tiny gasp escapes her, and she sucks in her lower lip a little as though she’s aroused by the sight.

‘I… is that…?’ she breathes.

‘Indeed it is,’ Killian says. ‘And with it you’ll get everything you want.’

*

When she’s sure about her target, she lets the arrow fly. It lands dead centre where it is supposed to, quivering, stuck inside the bark of a nearby tree. Mulan lets out a gasp, almost like a squeak, and stops running. She raises her hands, indicating surrender.

‘That was a warning shot,’ says Mary Margaret, stepping up behind her, another arrow already nocked. ‘Try to run, and I promise the next one won’t be.’

‘How did you find me?’ Mulan asks over her shoulder, not yet recovered enough to turn around and face her.

‘I know a thing or two about tracking,’ Mary Margaret answers coolly, so upset that the girl dares to deprive her of the opportunity of reuniting with her family, she feels nothing but cold fury, bordering on hatred, but not quite. Hatred never helped anyone.

Mulan turns around, her hands still in the air.

‘All we want is the compass,’ says Emma.

Mulan breathes out heavily, looks at the ground. ‘Very well.’

She uses that moment as a distraction to pull out her sword. She might have surprised Emma with it, but not Snow White. Before she manages to draw it out halfway, Snow is already upon her, tackling her to the ground, holding the head of her arrow less than an inch away from her carotid artery.

‘ _Give me the compass!_ ’ she says in a terrible voice.

‘And seal Aurora’s fate?’

‘We learned how to overpower Cora,’ Snow White speaks over her. ‘Once we get what we need, we’ll be able to defeat her, and Aurora will be free.’

‘Another journey,’ Mulan says dismissively, not at all disconcerted by her own proximity to death. ‘Just as I predicted there would be. Our best chance to save Aurora is to make that trade now.’

‘Not going to happen,’ Snow says fervently. ‘Without that compass we can’t get home.’

‘Then I hope you’re prepared to use that arrow,’ the other woman says evenly.

Unsettled Snow looks at the arrow in her hand, then at Mulan. Her options are limited. She draws the arrow away a little so as to take aim, still not fully decided on what she’s going to do, when a shout makes the decision for her.

‘Stop!’

Snow looks up surprised. It really is Aurora stomping towards them.

‘Okay,’ says Emma, who’s clearly gotten her voice back sooner than her mother, ‘don’t take this the wrong way, but how the hell did you get here?’

Aurora ignores her. ‘Let Mulan go,’ she speaks to Snow, walking up to her. Snow is too flummoxed to speak, to move at all. ‘I said, let her go!’

Snow falls back more than she backs away, mesmerised by the appearance of the princess. Aurora bends down to help Mulan up, but the warrior gets to her feet quicker than she can move.

‘Were you followed?’ asks Mulan, her predicament from a few seconds ago already forgotten.

‘I… I don’t think so,’ Aurora replies. ‘Cora may know I’m gone, but she didn’t see me escape.’

‘How _did_ you escape?’ Emma asks.

‘It was Hook,’ says the princess, taking everyone by surprise. ‘He let me go.’

‘Why?’

Aurora looks intently back at Emma. ‘Because of you. He said he wanted to prove to you that you should have trusted him. That _if_ you had trusted him you could have defeated Cora together. That the two of you could have gotten the remains of the wardrobe. Without him you’ll have to go up against her all by yourself. He only wants to help, but I think he might care for you.’

Snow looks over at her daughter. Emma just stares at the princess, clearly as overwhelmed by her speech as she is.

*

‘Nice touch that,’ Hook says, smirking.

Cora regrets it a little that she released him already. She looks over at him as he fiddles with his hook, clearly happy to have it back so soon. She lowers the princess’s heart through which she has been speaking, making the girl repeat all those words to her three friends, none of them the wiser that they aren’t her own. Not even the princess knows she doesn’t have her heart. After all, Hook, the manipulative bastard, has taken it from her while she had been sleeping. Maybe he is as bad as she is after all, maybe even worse.

‘But you know, she won’t trust you,’ she tells him, referring to Snow White’s daughter.

‘Ah, she doesn’t have to,’ the pirate says offhandedly, but Cora thinks she does know better. This man has too many weaknesses to be a really useful and reliable ally, but he will do until she can afford to get rid of him. ‘All I need is her to believe that I was genuine in letting the girl go, which I wager she does now.’ He smiles coldly and opens his eyes wide, as though expecting a reaction from her. ‘You’re welcome.’

Cora would probably really hate him with a vengeance if she were capable of such a strong feeling. All the feelings she can muster for him are amusement at best or contempt at worst. After all there is no greater man than the Dark One, and this insignificant underling thinks he can defeat him all by himself? As if Rumplestiltskin didn’t deserve to be vanquished by an equal.

‘Impressive,’ she says, not rising to his bait. ‘You took a heart.’

‘Now you have a princess,’ he replies, inclining his head a little in an uncharacteristic bout of humility as though he finally knows his place, understands to whom he must always swear his allegiance, devote his body and soul. As long as she wants him to, he will be her slave, her willing slave, because his heart she never took from him.

‘Indeed I do,’ she says.

‘Now,’ he says, raising his eyebrows in mock friendliness, ‘can we go on with the business of going to Storybrooke…?’ He makes a pause and almost winks at her. ‘Together?’

He may think he looks nonchalant, but she knows of the power she holds over him. He cannot go alone, he _needs_ her. But she also needs him in a way, not as much of course, but at least she owes him now. Hook doesn’t need to know that.

‘Why not? I hate to travel alone,’ she says casually, looking up at him and remembering that she enjoys that view so much she might have regretted leaving him behind even if he hadn’t brought her Aurora’s heart. ‘All we need is the compass.’

‘Which will soon be delivered,’ Hook says and smirks again.

Cora watches him leave the cave, feeling slightly revolted, then turns her attention back to the heart. She can hear the voices, even see the other three women, when she concentrates on it.

She says, ‘Did you find a way to stop Cora?’ and can hear the princess say the words with her.

*

Emma is still recovering from Aurora’s revelation that Hook rescued her, but perhaps even more so from the words he had apparently asked her to repeat. She isn’t too surprised to hear that he likes her. As if he hasn’t given off enough inappropriate hints. She just thinks it’s weird that he’s telling her through the princess. Then again he’s not a normal guy, he’s a man from another time with completely different customs, so that’s probably the reason why his behaviour seems so unreal to her. She also doesn’t want to think about him; there are much more important things to worry about.

As though sensing her thoughts, Aurora asks, ‘Did you find a way to stop Cora?’

‘Yes,’ she replies.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Rumplestiltskin’s cell.’

‘Great,’ says Aurora. ‘Lead the way.’

Emma follows Mary Margaret, because she certainly doesn’t remember the way, the other two behind her. She wonders what lies ahead. After all it’s one thing finding the squid ink, but a totally different one to actually use it on Cora to remove her powers for a while. This isn’t going to be easy, but one step at a time. She wonders if Hook really would have helped them and if he had, if that had made things less difficult. Impatiently she shoves the thought away. Whatever she should or should not have done, it doesn’t matter now. It’s done, and she can’t change it. They will succeed either way, simply because they have to, and sometimes motivation is enough.

 

**2**

‘My Queen,’ the genie said, and his face blinked into existence inside the mirror on Regina’s dressing table where she was brushing her hair.

She sighed impatiently. ‘What now?’

‘I believe this could be important,’ he continued nervously. ‘A man just broke into your castle.’

‘Where? How? Where is he?’

‘He hasn’t been caught,’ he explained. ‘Nobody saw him but me… and the guards he killed on his way.’

Regina felt anger boil up inside her at her guards’ incompetence. ‘What? Show me!’

The genie’s face disappeared, and instead she could see the inside of one her towers where she kept her prisoners. She didn’t know exactly which one that was, but there was one thing she knew. To get to the towers was a long way not to get noticed except by a magic mirror.

‘How the hell did he get in so far?’

Inside the mirror, the man, who was completely unrecognisable due to being covered head to toe in a big dark cloak, had almost reached the top of the staircase. One of her guards walked over to him to stand in his way.

‘Halt,’ he said.

‘Food for the prisoner,’ rasped the intruder. He was even trying to disguise his voice.

‘It’s not meal time,’ the guard pointed out sharply. ‘Who are you? Identify yourself, slave!’

He tried to remove the stranger’s hood, but the man drew back and stabbed him in the neck with something Regina couldn’t see, possibly a knife. The man who was standing guard in front of the prisoner’s cell was approaching him from behind with his sword drawn now, but the other man swirled around and disarmed him easily, stabbed him in the belly and hurled him on top of the other dead guard.

Then he brushed off his hood, revealing a dark-haired head, a thin face with a scrubby beard, but most distinctive was the hook in place of a left hand. Regina recognised him now.

‘Slave,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘I prefer captain.’

Captain Hook, Regina thought, and that got her an idea. The pirate removed the keys to the cell from the second guard’s belt and went up the last flight of stairs. Regina decided to watch what was going to happen.

*

Killian pushed the door open. The imprisoned girl was sitting chained up on her bed. When he entered she looked up startled as though he’d wakened her. She was quite a pretty girl, with long red-brown wavy hair and blue eyes.

‘Hey,’ he said smiling, closing the door again. ‘You must be Belle.’

She sat up straight, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. ‘The Queen sent you, didn’t she?’ she said defiantly as he walked up to her. ‘She wants you to kill me.’

‘I’m not here to kill you, love,’ he said and knelt down in front of her. ‘I’m here to rescue you.’ He found the shackles at her feet and began to worry at them with his hook.

‘Rescue me?’ she asked, and he could hear a smile in her voice, her tone now gentle. ‘Who are you?’

Done with removing the shackles, Killian looked up at her. ‘A friend,’ he breathed, smiling again, and proceeded to open her manacles. ‘We haven’t much time. Your father’s life is in danger. He’s being attacked by the very same monster who stole you away from your family in the first place.’

‘What, Rumplestiltskin?’ she asked and laughed a little, like the notion was absolutely preposterous.

‘The Dark One, he must be stopped,’ Killian agreed, taking off the manacles, and helped her to her feet. ‘You’ve spent more time with him than anyone. There are rumours of a magical weapon that has the power to kill him.’

‘No, no,’ she interrupted him, as though he was being unreasonable. ‘Let… let me talk to him. He’s _not_ a monster.’

‘Belle, your father’s life hangs in the balance. I _need_ to know what that weapon is and where to find it.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Belle said firmly, ‘and I have no idea how to… _kill_ Rumplestiltskin.’

‘You don’t?’ Killian said, staring down at her.

‘No! And… and nor would I!’

Killian thought about it a moment. ‘Hmm. Then I’m afraid I’m not here to rescue you.’

He drew his right arm to the side and hit her with the back of his hand. She landed on the bed and remained lying there, the force of his blow having knocked her unconscious. He looked down at her supine figure musingly. The risk wasn’t worth it to bring her along now. He didn’t fancy being in the company of someone who had obviously fallen for the crocodile. On the other hand if he left her there, she could tell someone about the man who had broken into her cell and asked questions about the Dark One. That wouldn’t do. She might not know who he was, but many people did, and he needed to remain undetected as long as possible, so word of him didn’t reach Rumplestiltskin’s ears. So far, he doubted the Dark One knew he was still alive, for if he did, he would surely hunt him down.

‘So pretty…’ he said to himself and sighed, ‘yet so useless.’

Beating down his reservations about the decision, he raised his hook to kill her with it. As he brought it down, however, it was suddenly gone from his wrist.

‘No, not useless,’ a deep female voice said from the door. Killian looked over at the woman. She was dark-haired, slender, wearing a royal blue dress with silver decorations, and in her hand she was holding his hook. ‘She’s a valuable chess piece.’

‘Do I look like I’m playing a game of chess?’ he asked irritably. She slammed the door shut, staring at him haughtily. He held out his hand. ‘My hook, if you please?’

He didn’t need it back to kill Belle now, because he wouldn’t. Why would he? He’d already been detected, and this woman could do magic, so he had no chance against her. He wanted his hook back, because it was part of who he was.

‘No,’ she replied happily, cradling it against her chest.

Killian smiled sardonically. ‘The asking was me being a gentleman.’

‘Is that any way to address a queen?’ she asked in a foreboding voice.

He stopped in his tracks, feeling slightly uneasy. Not only was she a witch, but she also was the Evil Queen; the one whose castle he just broke into, who had caught him red-handed trying to free or kill one of her prisoners, not to mention a handful of her guards. Maybe he wouldn’t get his revenge after all. Maybe he’d just end up on the gallows today. Served him right.

‘Even a pirate should have better manners than that.’ She watched his face for a reaction that evidently didn’t fail to make an appearance and approached him. ‘Yes,’ she said in a hushed voice and began circling him. ‘I know who you are… captain. I know why you came here from Neverland, and I know all about the crocodile you wish to skin.’

She didn’t sound like she was planning on stringing him up just yet.

‘Then you also know that I’ll stop at nothing.’

‘So, dedicated,’ she exclaimed, ‘and resourceful. No one has been able to fight their way past my defences before.

‘She can’t help you kill Rumplestiltskin, Hook,’ she continued, referring to Belle, ‘but I can. If you do something for _me_.’ She put the hook into the neckline of his waistcoat at the lowest point, nearly scratching his skin with it, and pulled him towards her. Killian didn’t resist, partly because he didn’t see any harm in it, partly because the hook was so sharp it could easily cut through his clothes. He wondered what it was she wanted him to do. Her face was now very close to his. She smirked at him. ‘Care to join me for a drink?’

*

While Killian eyed her dubiously, the Queen filled two goblets from a jug. ‘Things are about to change in this world…’  Luckily the goblet she handed him was filled to the brim unlike the one she took. It was only wine, but Killian wasn’t one to decline a drink when offered. She looked into his eyes and only reluctantly seemed to let go of the goblet, ‘… radically. I have plans to enact a curse that will take everyone to a far-off land.’ She gesticulated into the distance using his hook.

Killian had taken a gulp and surveyed the Queen who was clearly very pleased with herself. He didn’t feel much respect for her; she was far too dramatic which reminded him of the crocodile.

‘How will that help me?’ he asked.

She snorted and turned around to look at him. ‘This new realm? It’s a land without magic, where the Dark One will be stripped of his powers. There you won’t need any magical weapon to kill him.’ She put the hook just below his chin, slightly lifting his head with it. Again her face was very close to his. He didn’t like the proximity, but didn’t turn away. One wrong move could make her slit his throat. ‘You can do it with a mere flick of your wrist.’ She made a small sweeping motion without the sharp end ever actually touching him. Still, he was hoping she would give him his hook back soon, especially if she kept brandishing it around so. She might really put someone’s eye out.

Nevertheless, the proposition with the curse was appealing. Why not? If the crocodile was to be like a mortal man without magic again, the fight might still not be fair, but at least he, Killian, would be at the advantage. He didn’t mind that for a change, bearing in mind what happened last time the fight hadn’t been fair. He lost both Milah and his hand.

‘Tell me what I have to do.’

‘There’s one person I don’t want following me to this new land,’ replied the Queen, again very serious and turned around. ‘You’re to see to it that doesn’t happen.’

‘An assassination,’ Killian clarified, wondering why on earth she needed him to do that. The Queen could kill someone with a mere flick of her fingers he wagered. But why not? He had some time on his hand. Furthermore, he had to assume she would not let him live if he refused. ‘Who is it you want me to dispose of?’

The Queen turned around again. Her face remained impassive when she said, ‘My mother.’

Before he could say anything in return, she moved her hand across his hook. It shimmered slightly, but that could also have been his imagination. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to see magic, except for the smoke that he had seen on two occasions when Rumplestiltskin had magically disappeared and reappeared. It probably happened with everyone who used magic. Killian didn’t especially care to find out; he didn’t like magic very much. He was aware and appreciative of its practical uses, but more often than not, it appeared to be used against him.

‘It’s now…’ The Queen walked back to him and put the hook back in its place, ‘enchanted. It will enable you to rip out her heart. I believe you’ve seen it done before.’

She looked deeply into his eyes, her mouth slightly curving up in an amused fashion as though the memory of his lover’s death might not be painful to him. Killian wondered what else she knew about his past.

‘Yes,’ he replied coldly, feeling his heart contract again. Whether or not he liked the method, at least the Queen’s mother was not one he cared about. In fact, he cared about nobody anymore. What did it matter if some innocents perished on the sidelines? Hadn’t he been willing to murder Belle in cold blood, even though she had done nothing wrong? Would he have ripped her heart out, too, if someone had asked him to? Of course, for the right price. For Captain Hook nothing and no one mattered, not even himself, if they stood in the way of his revenge.

‘The enchantment will only allow you to rip out _one_ heart,’ the Queen explained with emphasis, ‘so make sure you do it right.’

Killian smiled at her even though he didn’t feel like it. ‘What could she have possibly done to warrant such brutality?’

‘That’s my business,’ she almost shouted, finally letting go of his hook. ‘Yours is to kill her and bring her body back to me.’

‘Easy enough,’ said Killian. ‘When will I set forth on this murderous journey?’ He put his goblet back on the tray.

‘Immediately,’ she replied, smiling again. ‘But you won’t be going alone.’ She winked at him and walked over to the other side of the room, clearly wanting him to follow her.

Near the hearth there was an armchair, covered with a blanket. Killian hadn’t noticed it before. The Queen ripped the blanket off, revealing a dead man sitting inside it. She turned around, a maniacal grin on her face. He should have expected that the Evil Queen was utterly mad. Was she keeping more corpses around in her private chambers?

‘You remember Claude,’ she said genially.

‘Can’t say that I do,’ admitted Killian.

Her face fell. He understood now she was merely playacting, but she still was too excited about this for him not to doubt her sanity.

‘You killed him in the cell block,’ she told him in an accusatory tone.

‘Ah, yes,’ Killian lied, never having seen the man’s face. ‘I didn’t recognise him without my hook in his neck.’ The man was taller and broader than him. He didn’t much fancy having to carry him around. ‘Forgive me, but isn’t he a bit of dead weight?’

‘I banished my mother to a far-off land some time ago. You’re going to need a portal to get to her.’ She walked over to her dressing table, picked up a hat box of all things, and placed it on a chair. ‘The rules are simple.’ She opened the box. ‘One goes in, one comes back. Or in this case, two in, two back. You’ll arrive with Claude, and you’ll return with my mother.’

Killian couldn’t say he liked the plan and enjoyed the idea of having to carry a dead man or woman around like some errand boy from hell, but it sounded feasible.

‘Now tell me,’ he said, ‘which far-off land do I have the pleasure of visiting today?’

The Queen popped an elegant black top hat from the box and grinned again. ‘Wonderland.’

‘Aptly named, I’m sure. How will I find her?’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ the Queen said happily again, not reassuring him at all, ‘she’ll find you.’

It sounded like a threat, which did make Killian wonder once more, why the Queen would want her mother killed at all. Could she be even worse than the Evil Queen? Well, certainly, he thought. But she surely couldn’t be any worse than him.

The Queen looked into the hat, and Killian asked himself if he maybe had to climb through it into the other land. It would be a little bit tight in there, and he didn’t want her to shrink him. Just as he walked towards her and looked over her shoulder into the hat as well, she twisted it and threw it onto the ground. Even when it landed, it kept spinning and spinning, opening a portal. He remembered another one from a very long time ago, and hoped his return from Wonderland would be easier and quicker than the one from Neverland.

*

Neverland, Wonderland, he didn’t care. Both lands were terrible. He preferred the Enchanted Forest or even better the high seas, really didn’t matter which one, just as long as he was aboard the Jolly Roger. This land, this _Wonder_ land wasn’t much of a wonder. Of course, it was wondrous, but it was mostly only very tall grass and huge insects, and it had a weird smell he didn’t like. Not to mention the crazy people who lived here. If he had thought the Queen was mad, the inhabitants of Wonderland were all completely barmy.

He had to carry Claude over his shoulders, who proved to be just as heavy as he looked, and it was hard enough to find one’s proper way in this wretched land without being weighed down, too. The large talking caterpillar he met near the place where the portal brought him was smoking its pipe and gave him cryptic answers as to where he might find whom he was looking for. He would just have to trust the Queen’s word that Cora would find him, so he simply carried on that path that led through the high grass and the towering flowers. When he finally reached some manner of civilisation in form of a garden with labyrinthine hedges, soldiers had swarmed around him, overpowered him, and called for the Knave of Hearts.

‘A playing card?’ he had asked them, but they ignored him.

The Knave of Heart, it transpired, was just a man dressed in a scarlet ermine cloak with a similar coloured biretta, which made him look like a confused man who did not know whether he was a clergyman or a king. But he wasn’t the King of course, he was only the Knave.

‘Who is this?’ the Knave asked the soldiers, who might well have been playing cards themselves, Killian thought amused. Maybe he would be executed now, but at least he could have one last laugh before he went.

‘An intruder.’

The Knave gave him an appraising look, then noticed the dead man on the ground behind him. Killian had had to drop him when they apprehended him.

‘This is Claude,’ he explained helpfully.

‘He’s dead,’ the Knave pointed out.

‘Aye that he is.’

‘Bring them before the Queen!’ the Knave ordered indignantly.

Two soldiers grabbed Killian by the arms and forced him to walk with them behind the Knave. He resisted a bit, but the card soldiers were weirdly strong.

They crossed through the gardens and moved along through a large wrought-iron gate into the Queen’s palace. Killian saw the Queen sitting on a throne beneath a canopy. Her court was standing in two diagonal lines on either side of it. It all looked very menacing and peculiar, but Killian was having trouble taking anything seriously.

The way towards them lead them over a narrow bridge where to either side a sheer drop into nothingness didn’t bode well for someone who displeased the Queen of Hearts. Killian had a special talent in displeasing royalty or any figure that demanded respect.

They approached the court and the Queen, and he saw now that all of them wore various masks, so he couldn’t see any of their faces. In fact, the only person here who didn’t hide their face was the Knave.

‘Kneel before the Queen of Hearts!’ the very man now said to Killian, who wouldn’t have bothered if the soldiers holding him hadn’t borne down on his shoulders, forcing him down on one knee.

‘Appreciate the warm welcome,’ he remarked wryly.

The Knave bustled over to stand beside the Queen. She held out her hand towards him without sparing him a glance, and he produced a large spiral horn, which she held to her mouth, and as she spoke into it, the Knave listened at the other end. It was so much more ridiculous than anything Killian had ever seen in his life that he nearly burst out laughing. He decided however that this would displease the Queen, and that he maybe shouldn’t push his luck. Wonderland wasn’t a good place to draw your last breath.

‘The Queen wants to know why you’ve come to Wonderland,’ the Knave told him.

‘I’m in search of someone,’ answered Killian. ‘In her native land, she goes by Cora.’ He looked intently at her, wondering.

The Queen removed the mask from her face, stood up, and placed it behind her on the throne. She was an older woman, already over sixty years, with big brown eyes, and a wide scarlet mouth; good for gobbling up children he wagered.

‘In this land she goes by _Your Majesty_ ,’ she said imperiously, showing Killian that again he had not shown royalty the respect they thought was due to them.

But she was, as he had suspected, the Queen’s mother, not a queen herself. The Queen, her daughter, had married the King, her own family didn’t rule anything.

‘Leave us,’ Cora said to her court. _Here_ she was queen, but he didn’t care, now he knew who she really was.

Everyone else, including her Knave, left them alone. Killian remained kneeling on the ground.

‘Your name, pirate?’ she asked him.

He bowed his head, smiling. ‘Hook.’

‘What a clever nickname,’ she commented dryly.

He stood up and used his hook to pull a pearl necklace out of his pocket. ‘I come bearing gifts,’ he said and walked towards her, ‘if you’ll allow me.’

She ignored the gift, which wasn’t much of one anyway, and said, ‘This hat, your portal…’ She walked down the steps from her throne towards him, ‘if I understand correctly, the same number who travels through must also return.’ She stopped, standing a few steps above him, so she could still look down on him. ‘You arrived with _him_ ,’ she gestured at Claude lying on the stretcher behind him, ‘but who shall you return with?’

Killian fixed her with his eyes, still smiling, and threw the necklace over his shoulder.

‘You,’ he said callously, and plunged his hook into her chest. It went in smoothly without any blood or resistance whatsoever. He twisted it and pulled it back out.

It was empty. Cold dread flooded him. He stared up at her.

‘What?’

She looked delighted at his fear. ‘I’m the _Queen_ of Hearts. Do you really think I’d be so careless, as to keep my heart where everyone else does? This…’ Suddenly she thrust her hand forward into _his_ chest and closed her fingers around his heart. He felt a pain he hadn’t felt for decades, and he couldn’t breathe, he thought he would die like that or at least faint, but she held him upright and pulled him towards herself, looking down on him. ‘… is how it’s done. Tell me who did this. Who sent you here to kill me? _Who_?’

She dug her fingers deeper into his heart. Killian didn’t want to talk, but he couldn’t stop himself. He felt his jaw moving despite his agony, even though he didn’t think he had breath enough to speak the words.

‘Your daughter,’ he gasped.

The shock over his answer made her relinquish the grip somewhat.

‘Regina?’ she asked him, and Killian had to admit to himself that he had had no idea what the Queen’s name was. He’d always had different things to worry about than who was sitting on the throne at that particular moment. Whether they were called Leopold or George, Snow White or Regina didn’t affect him either way. ‘She… wants me dead?’ Cora looked deeply into his eyes as though trying to find the answer there. He would have told her that this was a stupid question, but apparently he could only speak when she allowed him to. Maybe it was prudent to keep his thoughts to himself at any rate. ‘You’re now going to tell me everything, and do exactly what I want. Because when you hold a heart,’ he could feel her fingers tightening around his heart again, and the pain was in his spine, his head, his legs, everywhere, ‘you control it. You have the power.’

*

Emma stares at the parchment in her hands. It’s covered over and over with her name. Mr Gold has an even, slanting writing style and the repetition of the four letters makes it look more like a pattern than words.

‘What does this even mean?’ she asks no one in particular, while the other three women are rummaging around inside the cell looking for the squid ink.

‘He was obsessed with you, Emma,’ Mary Margaret says from above her head. She has climbed up the rocky wall and peered into a crack, apparently without success as she is coming down again. ‘You were the key to breaking the curse.’

‘We’ve looked everywhere,’ Aurora says frustrated, standing up from where she’d been crouching near the entrance to the cell. ‘There’s no ink in this cell.’

‘Well, there has to be,’ Mary Margaret contradicts. ‘He told David.’

‘You were in a netherworld,’ Emma says distracted, not taking her eyes off the parchment. ‘Maybe something got lost in translation.’

‘No,’ says Mulan now, pulling her arm out of a deep hole in the cave wall. ‘She heard right.’ She’s holding something in her hand.

‘You found it,’ says Mary Margaret excitedly.

The other three crowd around Mulan as she holds up the tiny bottle in her hand for them to see.

‘In a manner of speaking. There _was_ ink in the cell.’ She upends it to show them it’s empty.

‘Son of a bitch,’ mumbles Emma.

However, Aurora lets out her feelings in a completely uncharacteristic manner. She tosses a stone she’s been holding away in frustration. Unfortunately it hits the mechanism outside the cell, which controls the bars.

‘Aurora, what are you doing?’ shrieks Emma, as the bars descend, locking all four of them inside the cell. She runs over, trying to stop the inevitable from happening.

‘Helping me,’ a voice speaks from outside the cell.

Cora and Hook are standing a few feet away from them. It looks as if they have been there the whole time. Hook is leaning casually against the cave wall, not looking at them, as though he’s bored.

Cora walks towards the bars and waves her hand. Emma is too late in realising she’s using magic as the compass disappears from her grasp. Cora is holding it up and grinning at it in triumph.

‘No!’ Emma gasps and rattles at the bars. ‘No!’ The worst thing imaginable had just happened. Cora has both things now, the compass and the ashes, and they have nothing. They are locked in. There is nothing they can do. In her desperation, Emma keeps trying to break the bars. They look so rusted, they have to have a weak spot.

‘Don’t waste your energy, dear,’ Cora says to her in mock concern. ‘Rumplestiltskin himself couldn’t escape from this cell. Thank you, Aurora, we couldn’t have done it without you.’

Emma turns around to look at the princess. ‘Why would you do this?’ she says.

‘How could you?’ Mary Margaret joins in.

Aurora looks completely baffled.

‘Don’t blame her,’ Cora says, chuckling. ‘She was only doing what she was told.’ With that she pulls out a glowing red thing. Emma thinks it’s a heart. It kind of looks like one.

‘You took her heart?’

‘Actually, I did,’ says Hook from behind Cora. ‘It was a gift.’ He hasn’t moved from the spot, he still looks like he’s tired or bored. Emma stares at him, not quite believing he would do such a thing.

Cora smiles wickedly, still holding the heart aloft. Then she presses her fingers over it together, as though trying to crush it. Emma hasn’t seen that being done before, at least not with the heart in her sight, but she knows what can happen. Behind her Aurora starts to scream, because she can feel what Cora does to her heart. Emma feels helpless, sick, she wants to help but she cannot.

‘Forgive us,’ Cora says, releasing her grip on the heart. ‘We’d love to stay, but Storybrooke awaits.’

She tosses the compass lightly in her hand, turns around, and walks past Hook towards the exit. Glowering, he pushes himself away from the wall and moves to follow her, but Emma calls out to him; her very last resort.

‘Hook, wait!’ She feels ashamed she has to stoop to this, since she doesn’t trust him, doesn’t like him, but she trusts and likes him more than Cora. And she knows there is still that connection between them, the one she doesn’t quite understand. ‘Please don’t do this. My son is in Storybrooke. He needs me.’

Hook just looks at her, then walks back to the cell. ‘Perhaps you should’ve considered that before you abandoned me on that beanstalk.’ He comes to a stop about a foot away from the bars.

‘You would’ve done the same,’ says Emma.

He takes another step towards her, now so close to her she could touch him, grab him, maybe stop him from leaving for a few seconds, but she needs his help, not a hostage.

‘Actually, no,’ he says, and again she knows he’s not lying.

She feels unease again, this time not because of her situation, but because there is a possibility that things could have turned out differently if she had trusted him. He distracts her by pulling something out of his pocket and showing it to her. It’s something black and tiny that hangs from a silver chain, like some kind of a charm on a necklace.

‘Do you know what this is, Emma?’

As he holds it out directly in front of her face, she recognises it.

‘The bean that the giant kept.’ She tries to make a grab for it, but Hook holds it high up out of her reach, clicking his tongue disapprovingly.

‘Ah, ah, ah! Yes, indeed.’ He takes a sharp intake of breath and looks up at the bean dangling from its chain. ‘A pirate always keeps a souvenir of his conquest, but this… well, this is much more than a mere trinket.’ Emma eyes the bean nervously, trying to work out a way for her to take it from him after all. This could be their way out now. There has to be a way to make the bean work again.

‘This is a symbol,’ Hook continues babbling on, taking the bean down into his hand, and brandishing it in front of her face. ‘Something that was once magical, full of hope, possibility.’ He grins. ‘Now look at it. Dried-up, dead, useless.’ He looks at it, too, then up at her. Emma fears his next words, maybe because she had been thinking them so much herself these days. He leans in close. ‘Much like you.’ The words don’t hurt less, just because she expected them. ‘The time for making deals is done, just as I’m done… with you.’ He points at her, then backs away, leaving the dungeon together with Cora.

*

He shouldn’t have said that. He shouldn’t have said any of it. All right, without the princess’s heart they wouldn’t have found them and the compass, so that was something he had had to do, even though it was despicable. And he had _intended_ to give the heart back to her, but that plan had gone out of the window. Cora not letting the heart out of her sight once, even after it had fulfilled its purpose, made it impossible for him to snatch it from her. When Swan had called to him, he had walked over to her with the full intention of making her see the bean. Cora couldn’t object to him talking to her, especially if he appeared to mock her. He could hardly the bean have handed over to her though, could he? However, that his mouth had run away with him again, that is entirely on him. He hadn’t needed to bring her down so, only to convince Cora he isn’t on her side. He really isn’t on her side, he is on _his_ side or nobody’s. But the insulting part, that he’d clearly overdone, and the look on Emma’s face may well haunt him until his dying day if he fails to make amends somehow.

‘Where are we going?’ he asks Cora.

They are outside now, having walked for quite some time. She might have been able to transport them by magic, but Killian assumes she wants to act like an ordinary person again. Another way to display her power perhaps, showing him that she doesn’t need magic all the time?

The countryside here is bleak, dry, rocky. The remaining vegetation is still green, but there isn’t all that much left.

‘Lake Nostos,’ she explains. ‘The legend says its waters hold the power to restore what was once lost. It’ll return magic to what remains of this wardrobe. And then we’ll be able to cross worlds.’

She comes to a stop, and Killian with her. They stand overlooking a dry depression in the land, sandy, but entirely waterless. An empty lakebed.

‘I may be a simple pirate,’ Killian points out irritably, angry at several things at once. At himself, at her, at the fact that they’ve reached another dead end, ‘but I know one thing… lakes have water.’

Cora lifts up her hand and twirls her fingers in the air. In the middle of the lakebed a whirlwind appears, summoned by her magic. It digs a hole in the desiccated land, deeply until a geyser of water erupts from underneath the earth, filling up the lake with water yet again.

‘After everything we’ve been through, why do you still doubt me?’

Maybe his spirits have lifted somewhat from her display of useful power, but he also recalls some of the things they’ve been through, and not many of them are pleasant to remember.

*

The man’s life was hanging by a thread, and Cora knew it. She enjoyed having that kind of power over him, the man who had just waltzed in here and tried to kill her in her own home. Just thinking about the sheer insolence of that made her squeeze his heart tighter. She relished in the sound of his strained breathing, the fearful cry of anguish. A youthful face concealed the ancient soul, but she felt, maybe even through the heart she was holding, that in his mind he was still really young, still merely thirty years, maybe younger, never really grown up.

From the things he had told her, his quest for vengeance on the Dark One and her daughter’s wish to enact the curse Rumplestiltskin had procured, the curse the Dark One had wanted one of Cora’s children to cast, she gathered Hook was just a pawn, a pawn Rumplestiltskin didn’t even know still existed in his game, yet nothing more, because everything was connected as if by a higher power. Hook had lost count of for how many years he had been following his pursuit for revenge, but it was all that had kept him alive, all that consumed him. He would be very easy to get on her side, the weak and foolish boy.

‘I’ve told you all I know,’ he said, ‘now have some honour and kill me.’

Cora laughed in his face. ‘Honour? For the pirate who snuck into my palace to assassinate me?’

‘At your daughter’s behest,’ he replied disdainfully, showing his teeth. He really had a death wish.

‘ _She_ should’ve come. _She_ should’ve killed me herself.’ When it came to Regina, Cora felt her own weakness. Even though she couldn’t love, Regina haunted her dreams. She squeezed the heart in her hand, as the anger took over, but it was a man who cried in pain. Cora thought about killing him, getting through the portal with his body, but what would that accomplish? Sharply she withdrew her hand from his chest without the heart, and the man collapsed onto the ground in a heap, gasping for breath.

Cora walked back up the stairs to her throne. The pirate’s stench was on her glove now, she would never be able to wash that out. She turned around gracefully and sat back down.

‘Mercy seems a bit out of character,’ he said, standing up laboriously.

‘Oh, not mercy, Hook,’ she said lightly. ‘You’re going to help me. Regina knows my methods better than anyone. If I was controlling you, she’d know. This has to be _your_ choice.’ She was gesturing at him, smiling friendly, while Hook was still reeling from the immense pain and the rush of emotions that accompanied the release of his heart.

‘Why should I?’ he asked roughly.

‘’cause, my dear, I’m the _only_ one who can give you what you want.’

Hook was grinning now, back in his element. The cocky pirate, who fears nothing, needs nobody. ‘That so?’

‘This curse my daughter plans to enact, this new land she’s taking everyone to? You won’t remember who you are. So tell me, captain… how do you expect to kill someone when you can’t even remember him? But if you do what I say, I’ll make sure you not only kill him, but that you remember every single moment.’

‘Well, what shall you have me do?’ he asked, his allegiance already changed. Never trust a pirate unless you know what his weaknesses are and how to exploit them. Captain Hook had plenty.

‘Get me close to my daughter,’ Cora said. ‘And then I’ll rip her heart out.’

*

When they dragged Hook before her, and she saw that frail-looking old woman in the arms of a guard standing behind him, Regina felt a pang of hatred towards the pirate, as though she wanted to kill him for murdering her mother. It was completely unreasonable since she had ordered him to do it, but still when she saw her lifeless form, a strange sense of protectiveness, of adoration filled her and with it a desire to make the person pay who had dared to lay a finger on her. The feeling passed.

‘Let him go,’ she ordered her guards. When he was released she could see a flicker of relief cross the man’s face as though he, too, had expected her to retaliate. ‘My mother has died, and this man took it upon himself to carry her body back to me. Bring my mother to the crypt and prepare everything for her funeral. Give him something to eat and then take him to the crypt as well.’

Two guards carried Cora’s body away, and another pair accompanied Hook from Regina’s room, looking as if they were marching him off to the dungeons rather than the kitchen. Hook didn’t look back at her, which she was grateful for. After all they were accomplices in a crime, and she knew he didn’t take her mother’s death as much to heart as she did and therefore couldn’t abide a look of confidence from him.

She changed into a more appropriate attire for a funeral and walked down to the crypt alone. Her mother was lying in an open sarcophagus, no longer in that ridiculously garish Wonderland getup, but in a dress befitting the Queen’s late mother, black, studded with diamonds and a matching cloak. She looked peaceful, as though she might be sleeping.

A quiet knock came from the door. She turned to see Hook standing there. He approached her without invitation, but looked solemn enough. Maybe he was a bit sad, too, but why he would be she didn’t understand.

‘Satisfied?’ he asked in a gentle voice.

‘Did she put up a fight?’

‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’

‘Thank you,’ said Regina. Hook didn’t move. ‘Now leave us,’ she ordered, feeling a bit impatient that he couldn’t take a hint. ‘I’d like a moment to say goodbye.’

He nodded curtly and left, closing the heavy double doors behind himself. Regina waited a moment for his footsteps to retreat, until she couldn’t hear anything from behind the doors, then she approached the coffin.

‘I’m sorry, mother,’ she said looking at the old face, both glad and sad that she wouldn’t get an answer. She leaned forward. ‘Without you I never would have become the person I am now. But I had no choice. I had to do this.’ Regina felt tears in her eyes she was not ashamed of. ‘After you killed Daniel, you told me something I’ve never forgotten. _Love is weakness_. Oh, mother you are _my_ weakness, because I love you. That’s why I couldn’t risk taking you to the new land with me. Your grip on my heart is just too strong. And for what I need to do, I can’t have any weakness.’ She sighed deeply, looking at the rose she brought with her, and put it on her mother’s chest. Then she rested her hand on her shoulder and looked at her one last time. ‘Goodbye, mother.’

Her heart heavy, she left the room through the double doors, to go weep in her private chambers and to prepare herself for casting the Dark Curse.

*

Cora clutched the rose in her hand. The moment had come and gone, and she hadn’t done anything. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t kill her daughter now. Her daughter’s words of farewell had changed everything.

Hook came out of the shadows. Cora hadn’t seen or heard when and from where he had broken in, but she had a suspicion he had been there the whole time, listening in on her daughter’s final words. She didn’t mind, for at least he understood it was none of his business.

‘What happened?’ he asked her, holding out his hand and gesturing for her to take it. Only Hook could be chivalrous and rude at the same time. ‘You didn’t kill her.’

She took his hand, and he helped her up into a sitting position.

‘There’s been a change in plans,’ she told him, still reeling from her own snap decision.

‘What would that be?’

‘My daughter’s curse is coming. We have to protect ourselves.’

Hook helped her out of the coffin, and then she used magic to transport them to an island far away from her daughter’s castle or anyone else Regina wanted to punish.

He looked around. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘I’m going to cast a spell that will keep us here and not send us to the place without magic. We will also retain our memories.’

Hook walked up and down the beach. ‘I need my ship,’ he declared.

‘Don’t worry, Hook,’ she said. ‘It’s all taken care of. The Jolly Roger lies anchored at the other side of the island. Everything we need is stored inside. We will go there, once my spell is cast.’

She looked up towards the far horizon where smoke was building up like a thunderstorm with purple clouds and green lightning. Regina’s curse was approaching. Hook had noticed it, too. He stared at it, maybe a little apprehensive, and walked back over to her.

‘Is that the curse? Isn’t it time you’d do something about it?’

Cora drove the end of her staff into the ground. A huge surge of magic flew out of its tip and rose into the air, spanning out far over them, and a huge portion of the land, not only the island they were standing on, but also part of the mainland across from it, was beneath her spell like under an umbrella. The curse, steadily approaching, moved over and on either side of the shield, never touching the part of the land that lay protected underneath the bubble.

‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to reconcile with her _before_ her curse destroys the land?’ Hook asked cynically, as the day went almost dark like night.

‘Regina doesn’t need me… not now when she _thinks_ she’s about to win. But I still have a place in her heart. And the curse won’t last forever.’ Cora knew something that Regina didn’t and that was that Rumplestiltskin wanted the curse to be broken. Rumple almost always got what he wanted. Cora might have been one of the few who had bested him, and probably the man beside her, but he would fail eventually, unlike her or Rumple. ‘It _will_ end. In twenty-eight years, there’ll be a saviour. And she’ll break it.’

‘ _Twenty-eight years?_ ’ repeated Hook when the words finally penetrated his brain.

‘You won’t even notice,’ she said calmly. ‘You’ll be frozen, like all those in this corner of the land. But when the curse ends, our quest will resume. And when it does, Regina will truly have lost everything. And then she’ll need me. _That’s_ when we’ll go to this new land. You’ll get your revenge. And me, I’ll… help her pick up the pieces.’

 

**3**

The geyser has retreated now, leaving only a small round lake in its wake. It’s not as big as the lake has been before, but it will do. Cora pulls the vial out from beneath her coat.

‘And now the ashes,’ she says to Hook. ‘Would you care to do the honours?’ The prospect of her imminent success makes her so happy, she can’t help but beam up at him.

Hook takes the vial from her, pops the cork off, and spills the contents into the water. A whirlpool appears in the middle of the lake, growing bigger, making it look like someone pulled the plug. The water turns clock-wise, but doesn’t run out. There’s a big purple tunnel made of water inside the lakebed now. It has worked; the lake restored the magical properties of the ashes.

‘Here we go,’ Cora says with elation. ‘We’ll be in Storybrooke soon enough. I really look forward to seeing my daughter.’ She produces the compass from her pocket and holds it up. ‘I told you I’d deliver you to Rumplestiltskin.’ She’s thinking about the possibility of delivering him as a gift to Rumplestiltskin instead, so the Dark One could avenge himself on the pirate for taking his wife, for having him lose his son, because that is Hook’s fault, too. But she still can make good use of him while he’s alive, using him as bait, for example, or making him fetch the dagger for her like the good dog he is.

Hook takes hold of the compass, too.

‘Now, _don’t_ let go, unless you want to end up some place that isn’t Storybrooke.’ She doesn’t know herself what will happen, if someone falls into this portal without the compass, but she can imagine it involves something painful like disintegrating. She wouldn’t want that to happen to him.

They prepare to jump when something zooms through the air towards them, knocking the compass out of their hands.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Emma calls from across the other side of the lake. She, Snow White, and Mulan are standing there. It appears they have left the princess behind. Snow White has shot the arrow, of course. ‘This portal’s taking _us_ home.’

‘The compass, get it,’ Snow White says to the other two.

Swan and Mulan prepare to run around to the other lakeside towards them.

‘Find it first,’ Cora orders Killian. ‘I’ll take care of them.’ She shoots a fire blast at Mulan who blocks it with her sword.

He turns to look for the compass, but Emma is already there to stand in his way. She swings her sword at him, and he parries it with his own. Her strike is strong, but she’s not an experienced fighter. She kicks him in the chest, and they move away from the compass, towards the place where he’s hidden the bean. She tries to hit him again, and he deflects the blow, disarms her, and throws her sword away. Far from giving up, she jumps at him, but he sidesteps her and instead throws her onto the ground. As she struggles to retrieve her sword, Killian sticks his own in the sand and grabs her by the ankle. An arrow misses his head by inches, but he doesn’t even realise it.

Still positioned on the other side of the lake, Snow watches the struggle, trying to decide at whom to shoot her next arrow. Before she can aim for Cora, however, she spots her and disappears in purple smoke. Only the satchel containing Aurora’s heart remains hovering in the air for a moment. Mulan hasn’t seen it or that Cora is gone. She pivots and accidentally hits the satchel with her sword. Too late she realises what she has done.

The satchel soars through the air and falls down towards the portal. Suddenly Hook is there, hanging over the crater, anchored to the shore by his hand holding onto Emma’s leg, his left arm stretched out far into the middle of the lake. He catches the strap of the satchel with his hook and pulls it and himself back to safety.

When he lets go of Emma, she scrambles away from him to get her sword back.

‘I may be a pirate, but I bristle at the thought of a woman losing her heart,’ he says to Mulan who stares at him incredulously. He throws her the satchel, and she catches it. ‘Unless it’s over me.’

Mulan looks at the satchel in her hand, undecided what to do next.

‘Go!’ Snow White’s voice calls from behind her.

‘No, but you need the compass,’ objects Mulan.

‘And Aurora needs her heart,’ the princess says fiercely.

Mulan thinks about it for a moment, then offers her her sword. ‘Take it.’ Snow grabs the sword by the handle. ‘It deflects her magic.’

They nod at each other, and Mulan runs away to the aid of another princess, leaving the fight two against two, even though Cora is nowhere to be seen right at the moment.

‘I had no idea you had such a soft side,’ Emma says to Hook who has since picked up his sword as well.

‘I don’t,’ says Hook amused. ‘I just like a fair fight.’

He attacks with a lot more flourish now, pivoting elegantly as though he’s dancing, but Emma has no idea why. His movements remind her of the way pirates fight in movies. He’s pretty strong though, and his fighting style’s effective, but she bets he hasn’t fought a dragon… at least she thinks he hasn’t. How many dragons are there? Surely not that many.

‘Good form,’ Killian says, catching her foot in his hook, with which she tried to kick him again, and flips her over. ‘Not good enough.’

Snow looks around. She hears a whistle from behind and whirls around. Cora is standing there, smirking at her. They circle each other, and suddenly Cora makes a forward movement with her hand. Snow tenses, preparing for a blast of magic, but nothing happens. Cora laughs at her.

Hook places his hook around the tip of Emma’s sword and crosses his own sword over it to form a crude circle. He gets down on his knees and slides his hook and sword down along the blade towards her, trapping her. ‘Normally, I’d prefer to do other more enjoyable activities with a woman on her back.’ He leans forward to grin in her face. ‘With my life on the line, you’ve left me no choice. Bit of advice? When I jab you with my sword, you’ll feel it. You might wanna quit.’

On the ground beneath her something hard is lying, digging uncomfortably into her back. She first thinks it’s a stone, but something feels off about it. While Hook’s entertaining himself with listening to his own voice, Emma surreptitiously pulls it out with her free hand. She knows what it is now, she’s held it in her hand before.

‘Why would I do that when I’m winning?’ she asks him and shows him the compass.

Hook looks at it, momentarily distracted. Emma pulls her sword out from under his grasp and kicks him in the stomach. He stumbles to his feet, but is ready to block another strike from her. When he moves her sword down with both his arms, he leaves his face unprotected.

‘Thanks,’ says Emma and punches him, her blow reinforced by the compass. Hook keels over backwards and remains on the ground, completely knocked out. ‘Now, let’s go home!’

She runs over to where Mary Margaret faces off with Cora. Before she can reach Cora however, she’s disappeared again.

‘Emma! Run!’ Mary Margaret calls and both head towards the lake.

Cora appears in front of them, holds out both her arms towards them, and both women are blasted back off their feet. She makes for Mary Margaret who’s quicker to stand up. Emma tries to get up, too, but Cora flattens her on the ground with her magic.

Snow stares at Cora as she stands in front of her. She laughs desperately. ‘Why do you want to go to Storybrooke?’

‘Because my daughter needs me,’ Cora replies as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. ‘And now I can give her the one thing she’s always wanted. Your heart. Goodbye, Snow.’

She prepares to plunge her hand into Snow’s chest. Suddenly Emma jumps up and between them, and Cora pushes her hand through her chest instead.

‘Emma!’ Mary Margaret screams in panic.

‘Oh, you foolish girl!’ Cora says, the expression on her face wavering between indignation and amusement. ‘Don’t you know? Love is weakness.’

Emma thinks she’s going to faint from the pain. It’s freezing, burning, making her feel light-headed. She feels Cora’s hand inside her chest, around her heart, and it hurts like you would expect it to hurt when someone has pushed their hand through your ribcage.

Cora proceeds to pull Emma’s heart out. But something’s blocking her. It’s as if her hand has gotten too big to pull out. The pain has lessened a bit. Cora and Emma stare at each other, none of them knowing what’s going on.

‘No,’ says Emma. ‘It’s strength.’

Something bright emanates from Emma’s chest, blasting Cora away from her, knocking her out like Hook. Mary Margaret runs over to her and puts her hand over her daughter’s chest, staring at it, hardly believing. Emma is breathing heavily.

‘What was that?’ she asks her.

‘That,’ says Mary Margaret, smiling with tears in her eyes, ‘is a great subject for discussion… when we get home!’

Only then Emma realises they’ve won. They have the compass, both their enemies are defeated, and they are free to use the portal.

‘Come on!’

Emma follows Mary Margaret as she runs over to the lake. She holds out the compass for her mother, so they can take hold of it together. They look at each other.

‘Ready?’ Mary Margaret asks, looking giddy with happiness.

‘Yeah!’ Emma says, still not quite believing it’s over. ‘Let’s go.’

And together they jump into the portal that will bring them home.

*

He feels like his head has been split open. What he had seen, however, had not been a figment of his imagination. He’d not much time before to wonder about how she’s got the compass from the giant or how she’d escaped the dungeon, but he knows now that Emma Swan can do anything, because she has stopped Cora from taking her heart, blasted her away with the power within her, which he believes is love, the antithesis to Cora’s magic. He’s always known love isn’t weakness, because, vengeance aside, it is what kept him alive, has stopped him from taking his own life many times. Swan’s magic is more than that though. It is light magic, good magic, something he can get behind. It is so unlike the crocodile’s, and he’d always thought all magic was evil, one way or another.

He crawls over to the stone where he’s hidden the bean when Cora wasn’t looking. Emma would have found it. She would have made the connection. It would have been better that way, because she’d maybe understood why he’d said those horrible things to her in the cell, but it can’t be helped. Someone as good as Emma should not ever want anything to do with something as rotten as him anyway. It’s better if she knows what he is right away, because she will not like what he’ll do once he arrives in Storybrooke.

With some effort he gets to his feet and walks over to where Cora is standing, staring into the lake, which a few minutes ago had been a functioning portal. Now the waters have calmed, the surface forming a mirror. Killian gingerly touches his left cheek where Emma had punched him, wondering if it’ll start to swell, and what Cora would think of his “pretty face” then.

‘We failed,’ she says disconsolately when he gets near enough to hear.

‘Really, Cora,’ he says, ‘after all this time, why do you still doubt me?’ He holds up the bean, dangling from the chain.

‘That bean is petrified,’ she objects after examining it. ‘It’s useless.’

Killian can’t quite believe that Cora, the one who always implies that he is so dim-witted, and she’s so much smarter would not have worked it out yet.

‘But these waters have regenerative properties. Perhaps it’s time to do some gardening.’

*

In the distance, not quite seen from the town, a ship appears on the horizon, mostly concealed by the descending fog. It is manned by only two people, a dashing young pirate and an old sorceress. The ship itself seems to be moving on its own, effortlessly gliding over the water towards the harbour. The pirate expands his spyglass to full length using his teeth, because he only has one hand, and looks through it.

‘There it is,’ Captain Hook says satisfied and folds the spyglass up again.

The woman next to him, clutches a withered rose to her chest. She smiles triumphantly.

‘Storybrooke,’ confirms Cora.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading.  
> I would be really glad if you could take the time to leave a comment.  
> If you have some issues with the text, please share them with me, since I really thrive to improve.
> 
> Thanks again!


	4. Gold or Me this Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What Cora and Hook get up to in Storybrooke.
> 
>  
> 
> _He likes to believe there is a special place in hell for parents who abandon their children to fend for themselves, for parents who betray their children, who make them suffer. But he supposes the same goes for men who murder fathers or mothers or for children who murder their parents. In the end, Killian thinks they will all meet again in that special place, Rumplestiltskin, Cora, Regina… Milah, and Captain Hook, of course, perhaps even Snow White and Prince Charming._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING:  
> This is a pretty depressing chapter in itself, but we're also dealing with a segment where a character is seriously considering killing themselves. If you've followed the story so far, you'll know who.

**1**

It’s pitch-dark now. No one’s around the docks. The Jolly Roger floats stealthily through the calm waters of Storybrooke harbour, while Captain Hook is standing up on the yard, watching the deserted area through his spyglass. A moment later, the ship comes to a halt next to a pier and the anchor drops on its own, all thanks to the benefit of Cora’s magic. After making sure they truly are alone, Killian grabs hold of a rope, swings himself down, and in one fluid motion he lands lightly on the gangway. For good measure, he also ties his ship to the port.

Cora walks towards him to disembark as well, and he holds out his hook to assist her stepping down onto the gangway. The night is chilly. In Emma’s world it’s much cooler than in the Enchanted Forest, but between scorching heat and numbing cold, Killian, the seasoned seafarer, has been through all manner of weather.

‘Well, my dear Cora,’ he says to her as he walks off the gangway behind her, ‘this is where we should part ways. Thank you for… everything. It’s time for me to skin my crocodile.’ Maybe if he leaves quickly enough, he will manage to free himself from her clutches before she has a chance to betray him. He’s done with her anyway; he’s betrayed her and learned his lesson, he’s not planning on doing it again. But if he doesn’t have to rely on her, if he doesn’t have to work for her anymore, there’s no chance either of them will be tempted.

He turns to leave, but he doesn’t manage to go for more than a few paces before she magically reappears in front of him, barring his way.

‘You might wanna rethink this,’ she advises him calmly.

So much for leaving. He should have legged it right away, but then… he would never have made it far at any rate.

‘We had a deal,’ he says angrily. ‘Get out of my way.’

‘Believe it or not,’ she says, ‘I’m doing you a favour.’

‘By preventing my vengeance?’ Killian asks. Maybe Cora doesn’t want him to kill the crocodile after all. Maybe she has something to gain from letting the Dark One live. He never had much time or patience for paying attention to what her plans entail; not that she’d ever actually been in the sharing mood. The only thing he knows for sure is that she wants to see her daughter again.

‘Ask yourself _how_ I’m doing that,’ she says patiently, since Killian is still the slow one after all.

He needs a moment to get it, but then when he does, he could kick himself.

‘By using your dark magic,’ he says and sighs.

‘Exactly. Magic,’ she says, ‘is here, and that makes matters a _bit_ more complicated. If you go off half-cocked after an empowered Rumplestiltskin, do you know what’ll happen?’

Killian knows. He knows because it’s already happened once before, and this time there isn’t anyone the Dark One would kill in his stead, this time Killian would die without the sliver of a chance to take revenge for Milah’s murder.

Cora watches his face. ‘So you do. Good.’

‘Hey,’ someone says from behind her, and she turns around. A bearded middle-aged man is standing there, smiling at them in a kindly fashion. He’s wearing a leather jacket and a strange kind of hat. Killian thinks that maybe that’s the way people in Emma’s world dress. Her attire has also been similarly outlandish. ‘You folks need anything? Tackle shop don’t open until morning, but if you want to go out and try and snare some of New England’s finest pescetarian creatures, I’d be happy to open early for ya.’

Despite his peculiar way of talking, Killian realises the man is a fisherman and therefore with some leeway a kindred spirit. Obviously the man isn’t aware of what kind of trouble he could be in, and Killian doesn’t fancy killing an innocent bystander, if it isn’t absolutely necessary.

‘No, thank you, we’re fine,’ he says pointedly, his voice gruff, so the stranger knows to scurry away.

The man, however, doesn’t take the hint. He looks over at the Jolly Roger with some appreciation. ‘It’s a fine vessel you got there. When’d you get in?’

‘What vessel?’ Cora asks seriously.

‘What?’ the man repeats confused. ‘Why, why that one right…’

Cora waves her hand. When Killian looks to his right, he doesn’t see the Jolly Roger anymore.

‘Hey,’ that’s a neat trick,’ says the man impressed. ‘You some kind of magician back in our land?’

Cora waves her hand again, and the man turns into a fish, flopping on the pier. Killian walks over to it and kicks it into the water, bearing in mind that the man might still be alive inside the creature somewhere, but really he can’t be bothered to care anymore.

‘What did you do with my ship?’ he asks, turning around to her, feeling kind of resigned to his fate.

‘I hid it from prying eyes,’ she says quite earnestly as far as he can tell. Well, she can be in a good mood for all he cares. After all, her plans didn’t backfire once more. She only needs to find her bloody daughter, whereas Killian’s stuck with her again, having to rely on someone else with more power, as bloody always. ‘For what we both want to do, we need the element of surprise. Now are you ready to listen to me?’

‘Go on, Your Majesty,’ Killian says, sighing deeply, ‘what now?’

‘Let’s go have a look at this Storybrooke, shall we?’ she suggests.

And again, Killian thinks resentfully, is he reduced to being someone else’s henchman, because guess whose plan is the priority now?

 

*

Regina might be prone to deluding herself, but she does notice when she isn’t welcome. She is thankful to Emma Swan for having invited her to the welcome home party for Mary Margaret and herself, something she would never have believed possible a few hours ago, but even a noble gesture like that cannot distract her from the fact that nobody, literally nobody, not even Dr Hopper even bothers to acknowledge her presence after her lasagne has been eaten, let alone have a conversation with her.

She’s watching Henry talking with the dwarfs, and she knows better than to butt in. Well, there is that. Nobody can say she didn’t try to socialise, but it seems it is going to need time until she can be part of the group of do-gooders, if ever.

No one notices as Regina slips out quietly; at least she thinks so.

‘Archie made a cake,’ Emma Swan calls after her.

Regina hasn’t even heard the doorbell jingle. She turns around surprised that Emma Swan of all people would have followed her outside. Well, okay that isn’t too surprising and not only because she had been the one who invited her. She and Emma had been at loggerheads ever since she arrived in Storybrooke, but Snow White, Prince Charming, and all the other former inhabitants of the Enchanted Forest have much more reason to shun and hate the Evil Queen than Henry’s birth mother does.

‘You don’t wanna stay for a piece?’ the smaller woman asks, skipping down the stairs to come to a stop in front of her.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Regina says with all the cordiality she can muster. She isn’t resentful towards Emma Swan, she’s just sad, lonely, and doesn’t feel like antagonising anyone right now. If she looks deep enough into her heart, she thinks she never wants to do it again. She just wants peace and be allowed to see Henry more often.

Emma Swan looks at her, then nods curtly.

‘Fine,’ she sighs and turns around to go back inside.

Regina hesitates, then calls after her. ‘Thank you.’

Emma swings back round again. ‘You just said that.’

‘F… for inviting me, ‘Regina stammers, marvelling at how nervous she is right now, how eager to make amends, maybe even friends? Emma Swan, her friend? Who would have thought?

‘Henry wanted it,’ says Emma, crushing that notion a bit. ‘I’m glad you guys got to spend some time together,’ she adds with such sincerity, Regina doesn’t even have time to feel disappointed that Emma didn’t invite her out of her own volition.

‘Me, too,’ she agrees, sensing an opportunity, she hasn’t expected to present itself so soon. ‘I’d like to see him more. Maybe you’d consider letting him stay over some time?’ Emma turns her head, looking back inside the diner as though hoping for support or backup, but that’s ridiculous. ‘I have his room just… just waiting for him.’ Regina chuckles.

‘Oh,’ Emma says, smiling uncomfortably. ‘I’m… I’m not sure that’s best.’

‘Because you know so much about parenting in the five minutes you’ve been with him? Talk to David, at least he took care of him while you were away,’ Regina spits and to her horror she feels tears in her eyes, that make her voice break a little, ‘like _I_ did, during the ten years you were away the first time.’

She realises she’s lost before Emma narrows her eyes.

‘Okay,’ she says, all geniality gone. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘No. Wait, I’m sorry,’ says Regina without missing a beat. It isn’t only the prospect of losing Henry, she thinks, that makes her back-pedal so fast. She’s afraid of being alone. Emma turns away. ‘I…’ Regina sighs, looking down, trying to compose herself. She doesn’t want to cry in front of her. ’Emma, I’m… I’m sorry. Snapping at you… I shouldn’t have done that.’ Emma just looks at her, her expression unmoving, and Regina feels impatient again. She needs to rein in her temper. ‘Will you accept my apology?’

Emma looks at her a little longer, and Regina feels her palms sweating. She can’t remember the last time she’d been so nervous talking to someone, of saying the wrong things, except with Henry, of course, the last few days. Before that probably with Rumplestiltskin or her mother.

‘Okay,’ Emma says at last, releasing the spell, and Regina can relax. ‘You’re right. Archie said you were trying to change, and,’ she shrugs, ‘well, you are.’

Regina doesn’t know what to make of that. Is she being evaluated by everyone now?

‘Doctor Hopper said I was trying?’ she repeats, hearing in her own voice how she’s trying to keep her emotions in check. Who does she think she is? Who does Dr Hopper think he is, confiding things about his patient to a virtual stranger?

‘He said you came to see him,’ Emma continues excited, not realising that she’s touched a nerve, ‘that you’re trying not to use magic, that you’re trying to _be_ a better person. You understand I was hesitant to invite you.’ She just keeps talking, completely oblivious to the fact that she’s digging herself into a hole, but maybe she isn’t even doing that. Maybe the hole is for Regina. ‘I asked him, and he thought it was a good idea.’

Regina stands there, looking. The smile on her face feels forced now. She doesn’t like that. If she thinks about it, had their roles been reversed, she’d probably done the same. Scratch that, she _had_ done the same. Never mind, it still hurts. She feels more apart from everyone than before, because she’s on the other side, and now people are deciding if it’s a good idea to associate with her, for her to see her son, consulting a third party about her, as though _she’s_ an ex-con. Well, in a way she is, but it pains her. It makes her feel lonely, rejected. She needs to talk to Dr Hopper, just as long as he doesn’t blab again. Maybe she should tell him, put him in his place.

‘Thank you, it was,’ she says and means it. Despite the unpleasant experience now and at the party, at least she had been able to spend time with Henry, and that is after all, all that matters.

Emma smiles, looking a little relieved. The situation is awkward for her, too.

‘I should be going,’ Regina says. She nods at Henry’s mother and leaves, before she can spill any tears. This time the other woman doesn’t stop her.

*

Regina is walking alone in the streets, looking sad and forlorn. It’s happening quicker than Cora anticipated. The sight of her lonely child does something funny inside her empty chest; maybe that’s compassion. If it is, she hasn’t felt it in a long time.

‘Well? Is she broken?’ Hook asks in a completely indifferent tone, having watched Regina through his spyglass. Right now it seems like he is the heartless one, but he never cares about anyone else but himself anyway. At least it was his idea to sneak on top of a building in order to spy on Regina.

‘Not yet,’ says Cora, watching her disappear from view. She needs to learn more about her daughter’s life before she can decide what to do next.

*

With all the things that have happened the last few days, Archie hasn’t found much time to work through his papers lately. What with finding out he is actually, like Henry said, the cricket from Pinocchio’s story, hasn’t made things easier. Of course, now in addition to the mere knowledge that the curse was real, the memories of his old life are back and Jiminy Cricket doesn’t find the truth strange at all, but Dr Archibald Hopper does, the psychiatrist he’s been the last twenty-eight years. He now knows that he was a man, who was turned into a cricket by the Blue Fairy to watch over the orphaned boy, Gepetto, and later over Gepetto’s son, Pinocchio. He wonders what happened to Pinocchio, because both the Blue Fairy and Gepetto are in Storybrooke, too, as Mother Superior and Marco respectively, but he doesn’t remember ever seeing a boy who looked like Pinocchio here.

Now Archie’s no longer a cricket but, even after David Nolan, Prince Charming, told them all to cherish both personalities inside themselves, he’s not sure who he really is. He condemns neither Jiminy Cricket nor Archie Hopper, because both did the best they could and he is grateful for them. His work is still to help people, and he likes it that way.

He turns to his paperwork, but a second later there is a knock on his door. Pongo, his Dalmatian, whimpers slightly as Archie gets up to answer. It is really much too late for a visit, but he doesn’t mind. People’s troubles don’t follow any schedule and since he’s here anyway, he might as well do his job.

The person standing at the door is not whom he had expected, though he might as well should have. Regina had confronted him about talking with Emma about her at the docks earlier today after all and she had not seemed finished berating him before Ruby interrupted her.

‘I know it’s late,’ she says apologetically, ‘but I was hoping we can talk.’

Archie looks at her for a bit, battling internally if he’s up to it now. But the hesitation does not go with his work ethic.

‘Sure,’ he says a little colder than actually fair. ‘Come on in.’ He steps aside to let her enter. Pongo starts barking as Regina walks into the room. She looks sheepish as though embarrassed or intimidated by his dog’s uncharacteristic aggressive behaviour. ‘Hush, Pongo, you know Regina.’

Archie walks over to his cabinet to take out her file. He isn’t really prepared for her and thinks that maybe he should use some backup this time around. ‘I know how hard it is,’ he says with his back on her, thinking about his own personal dilemma. ‘Real change can often be a struggle.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ says Regina in a different voice, standing much closer than he had expected.

He turns around startled. She’s right in front of him.

‘Regina, is there something…?’

Before he can finish his sentence, Regina’s hand suddenly snaps forward, and her fingers lock around his throat. Pongo starts barking wildly, but she uses her magic to freeze him on the spot.

As Regina lifts him up by one hand, still chocking him, he feels the life fading from his body.

*

Satisfied with what she’s accomplished tonight, she leaves the dingy office. She turns around the corner out of sight of the diner and other prying eyes, and waves her hand. Before she’s looked like Regina, but now she’s back to her own self now. Cora returns to the pirate’s ship to sleep and to wait and find out how the consequences of her deed will unfold tomorrow, how they will unravel Regina’s orderly life in Storybrooke.

*

The next morning Cora watches from the secluded area of a narrow alley, as the saviour and the leggy waitress from the diner follow the doctor’s spotted cur into his office. They will find the body there, and the waitress will put two and two together and accuse Regina. A few hours later, even the saviour is convinced of Regina’s guilt.

She also watches her daughter break down in her car, as she witnesses her son’s birth mother tell him what she thinks has happened. Now her work is done, Cora returns to the ship once more.

*

The calmness of the ocean at night has a soothing effect on him. Long gone is the time when a little boy woke up frightened on a dark stormy night to find his father had left him and his older brother alone in the world. He isn’t afraid of the dark or thunderstorms anymore, he never will be again.

Killian is sitting on a barrel at the pier next to his concealed ship, whetting the end of his hook into a sharp deadly point, so it can plunge deeply into the crocodile’s heart; another father who abandoned his son.

Baelfire had told him everything, about how he had procured the magic bean, which would have brought him and Rumplestiltskin to a land without magic, presumably this one, how his father who so loved making deals had backed out of theirs at the last moment to leave his son tumbling through the portal all alone. It could well be so that Bae is dead by now, because it seemed like such a long, long time since Killian had left him. But he has no concept of time anymore; he doesn’t know how old he really is.

He likes to believe there is a special place in hell for parents who abandon their children to fend for themselves, for parents who betray their children, who make them suffer. But he supposes the same goes for men who murder fathers or mothers or for children who murder their parents. In the end, Killian thinks they will all meet again in that special place, Rumplestiltskin, Cora, Regina… Milah, and Captain Hook, of course, perhaps even Snow White and Prince Charming. Not Emma though, no, she had made sure her son wouldn’t have to grow up alone and she had fought with everything she had to get back to him; it would have been a small price to pay for Killian to have starved to death up on the beanstalk or whatever else her betrayal might have cost him, as payback for all the atrocities he committed in his life. But it hadn’t cost him anything. He’s here now, and there are still more atrocities waiting to be committed.

The sound of footsteps startle him. He was supposed to remain unseen and here he is sitting out in the open, outside of Cora’s cloaking spell. If he has to, he will kill the person who detected him… unless it’s Emma or…

‘You’re back,’ Killian says, hiding his relief that it is only Cora by continuing the task with his hook. ‘So, did you get what you wanted?’

She stops in front of him. She’s smiling radiantly. Killian thinks that once upon a time she might have been a real beauty, but it’s faded now and her soul’s ugliness shines through.

‘Yes,’ she replies, looking past him thoughtfully and heaves a little sigh. Then she turns her eyes on him, smiling again. ‘My daughter’s lost everything now.’

‘Huh,’ he says, feeling a little dejected; mothers are supposed to be the better parent. At least he thinks they ought to be, not that he has a lot of personal experience to go on. To hide his sadness and confusion he grins up at her. ‘Well, aren’t you mum of the year?’

Cora looks at him as though he has disappointed maybe even offended her. He’s glad he still can get under her skin.

‘I did what was needed,’ she clarifies, but Killian very much doubts that.

After all the Queen has always loved her mother; she’d said it to her in the crypt all those years ago when she thought she was dead. He wagers it would be enough if Cora were to reveal herself to her daughter, and she’d had a happy reunion on her hands. He wants his own reunion now; the one which ends with either a dead crocodile or a dead pirate.

‘What about what _I_ need?’ he asks bluntly. ‘You promised you’d help me get my revenge on Rumpelstiltskin.’

‘And I’ve already started,’ she says unmoved by his rudeness, smiling down at him in a motherly fashion. ‘Or didn’t you notice the little gift I left you in the hold of your ship?’

‘A gift? Killian repeats, pocketing his small file and getting to his feet. ‘What is it?’

‘Not what,’ Cora corrects him. ‘Who.’ She beckons him to follow her and climbs up the invisible gangway onto his ship.

Down by the bunks Killian has been using nowadays, since Cora has claimed the captain’s cabin for herself, she opens one of the grids that cover the cargo hold and peers down into it. Killian steps forward and follows her gaze. He opens another grid next to the first. Down there a tall man is sitting tied up and gagged, looking up at them with a doleful expression on his face. He looks older than Killian, with receding ginger hair and round spectacles; maybe he’s a doctor.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Someone privy to Storybrooke’s deepest secrets, including Rumpelstiltskin’s. Someone who can help us determine his weaknesses here. Can’t you, Doctor Hopper?’

Killian has been under the impression the doctor were dead. Everyone had been talking about it all day. He’s heard them while hiding aboard the Jolly Roger and concluded that it had been Cora’s doing, not Regina’s. And the entire time, the man has been down here tied-up and helpless, but very much alive.

‘If that’s him,’ he asks when he realises something else, ‘then who did you kill?’

‘How do I know? It’s my first day in town,’ she replies in a mockingly defensive tone.

‘You disguised the body to look like him?’ he asks, looking down at the prisoner and grins. ‘If death wasn’t punishment enough… Marvellous work.’ He is in truth torn between admiration and disgust. As a villain though he appreciates her gumption and creativity, her resourcefulness at finding a man Rumpelstiltskin might actually talk to and discuss his fears with. In the Enchanted Forest there are no doctors you can routinely talk to when something troubles you in your mind rather than your body, but he isn’t oblivious to the concept anymore, because he’s heard enough today to draw his own conclusions.

‘Thank you,’ she says, possibly taking his compliment at face value and maybe rightly so. The ends always justify the means, he knows that more than anyone. ‘Now you’ll have all the knowledge you’ll need. It may take some work…’ The prisoner looks up at her with more fear in his eyes. ‘But this cricket will chirp.’

‘Aye,’ Killian says dangerously, staring down at him. ‘That he will.’

 

**2**

At the town line there never has been going on much. The residents avoid it because they are afraid of it and rightly so. Now night has fallen, however, it is even more unlikely anyone will find their way here, not even by accident. And that is the time Rumple has chosen to test his theory in order not to be disturbed.

He parks his car close but not too close to the red line Leroy has painted there a few days ago and gets out. Inside the boot his prisoner is lying tied up and gagged, ready to be an unwitting participant in his experiment. Rumple marvels at how nobody ever noted Smee’s absence. After all, he’d been in Storybrooke the last twenty-eight years, working at the cannery, but apparently he doesn’t have anyone who misses him. Too bad for dear old Smee, that his only friend, the wretched pirate captain isn’t here. Then again, Killian Jones, who’s better known as Hook now, doesn’t actually care about what happens to anyone else but himself. If Hook had been taken by the curse, he would be dead by now. Rumple would have seen to the captain’s demise before the curse was broken. That would have been one of the perks of having woken up before everyone else.

‘This will only take a moment,’ Rumple says to the frightened man and hauls him out of the boot.

Smee is rather heavy, but Rumple isn’t quite as weedy as he looks, and his sense of purpose gives him strength. He isn’t the same man he used to be a couple of decades ago, and even without magic he had not been that coward either. Now he has magic.

Smee gets to his feet and moves away from him as though in a daze, and Rumple rips off the gag. His prisoner turns around to look at him and as he sees the other man approaching him menacingly, he backs away from him towards the line, as Rumple wished he would. However, he walks too slowly for Rumple’s liking who shoves against his shoulder to hurry him along.

‘Don’t,’ Smee says pleadingly, ‘push me over. If I cross the line, I’ll lose my memory.’ He looks over his shoulder to keep the line in sight, so as not to walk over it accidentally. ‘It’s a cruel fate.’

‘A fate you were more than willing to bestow upon Belle.’

Rumple feels the anger inside him boil up when he remembers what Smee and Belle’s father, Moe, had planned to do to her in the mines, but he manages to quell it. He cannot lose his temper, he needs the snivelling rat for now. There isn’t anybody else he could use like this, nobody who wouldn’t be missed if the potion fails. Furthermore, Storybrooke doesn’t have an endless supply of citizens he can kidnap, so he has to make do with what he has.

He stops and whacks his cane against Smee’s kneecaps. The man grunts and immediately crumples to the ground, so he’s lying with his back to the line. Rumple bends over him and removes his woolly hat. He looks at it.

‘You’ve had this rag since the day we met. Why is it so important to you?’ he asks him, rummaging in his pocket for the bottle.

‘My grandmother made it for me when I was a boy,’ Smee answers in a sad, reminiscent voice. Rumple barely pays attention as he pours some of the potion over the hat. ‘It’s always brought me good fortune. What difference does it make?’ he asks, sounding almost truculent.

‘Oh,’ Rumple chuckles as he pockets the bottle again. He enjoys the stupidity of others, the way they think they figured things out, especially the gormless ones like Smee here. ‘All the difference in the world. It’s your only chance.’ He throws the hat back down to him.

Smee almost automatically puts it on right away, though Rumple imagines merely holding it would have sufficed.

‘What do you mean my only…?’

As Smee gets to his knees, Rumple kicks him, and he keels backwards over the town line. Rumple sees the current of magic pass over the entirety of Smee’s body and thinks it was all for nothing. Smee covers his face with his hands, gasps, and as the magic leaves, he removes them. He looks up at the other man in bewilderment. Rumple inches forward to observe him.

‘What’s your name?’ he asks huskily, not daring to hope.

Smee looks as though he tries to remember, and Rumple’s heart falters, until he replies, ‘William Smee.’

Rumple doesn’t quite believe it. Maybe that had been his cursed name, too, even though the look on Smee’s face really says it all. ‘And who am I?’

‘Rumplestiltskin,’ Smee replies in a hushed voice. He gets to his knees, looking fortified. ‘The Dark One.’ He smiles happily and gets up. ‘I remember everything!’ he rejoices, beaming at the man who tormented him and walks towards him. As he nears the line, he looks down at it as though reassuring himself that he indeed went over it. ‘How can this be?’

Since Smee is so daft, he cannot put two and two together Rumple will not indulge him. After all it’s better if as few people as possible know they could theoretically cross the line, or there would be a stampede of Storybrooke’s finest dunderheads trying to get over it, but not before they’d come to raid his shop.

‘Well, it seems our little experiment was a success.’ Rumple keeps his eyes on the line so as not to cross it himself, grabs Smee’s bound hands and pulls him towards him. Smee looks at him, frightened again, and for a nanosecond Rumple considers yanking off his stupid hat and pushing him back, to make him pay for trying to do the exact same thing to his Belle, but he beats that particular urge down for her, because he knows she wouldn’t like it, even if she might never even have learned he’d done it. ‘Now go.’ He says to Smee dismissively and pushes him away from the line towards the town instead. Smee doesn’t need telling twice and scurries off.

Rumple turns around and looks at the world beyond the line, now practically open to him.

‘I have a trip to plan.’

*

Morning isn’t quite here yet, when the man climbs down to him into the ship’s hold. He’s a pirate. That much is obvious from his black leather coat and vest, and his lavish jewellery, an earring and a large pendant with a skull and a sword. Other than that, Archie is only certain the young man is very troubled and working for Cora. Oh, and he also wants to know secrets about Mr Gold, whom he calls Rumplestiltskin, which means he probably comes from the Enchanted Forest; one of the persons whom the curse did not take.

The man sets a tankard on the bench next to Archie and fills it with some form of clear liquid from a pitcher.

‘Here,’ he says and lifts the cup to Archie’s lips as though he wants him to drink from it.

Archie, expecting a potion at best or poison at worst, clamps his mouth shut and turns his head away. The man sighs and takes a gulp himself. He screws up his handsome face as though he doesn’t like the taste.

‘See?’ he says, looking revolted. ‘Only water. I wager you don’t like rum, do you?’

Archie is surprised but thirsty, so he takes up the young man’s offer. ‘Thank you.’

The man smirks and raises his eyebrows.

‘I have some bread here, too, in case you’re hungry,’ he says. ‘But you’ll only get it after you’ve told me what I want to know.’

‘Who are you?’ Archie asks. He is frightened, but the man seems in a good enough mood.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ the stranger retorts, lifting his left arm.

Archie only now realises that he’s maimed. He just has his right hand with rings on every other finger, and instead of his left hand he wears a silver hook ending in an ominously sharpened tip.

‘Hook!’ he gasps, wondering how on earth he could have missed that. Hook was known as a scourge that plagued the waters around the Enchanted Forest for many years, long before Archie was even born. He’s heard stories of the cruelty of the pirate and his crew aboard his famous ship, the Jolly Roger. The magic of Neverland must have preserved his youth. Archie realises his knowledge of Hook is mingled with what he remembers from his own childhood and adulthood in the Enchanted Forest and with what he has read and seen in Storybrooke; a book, a play, and many movies.

‘Aye, _Captain_ Hook,’ the man replies, ‘and if you _don’t_ talk, I’ll find some creative ways of using my eponymous extremity on you.’

He walks closer to him and towers over him. Standing up, Archie believes he might be a bit taller than the pirate, but now he is all too aware of his vulnerable position.

‘Wait!’ he says hastily. ‘No, please, don’t!’ Hook kicks the tankard and pitcher over with his foot. ‘Wait!’ Archie feels the cold metal of the hook against his neck as the pirate crouches down to his level. The man grabs Archie’s chin as though to cover his mouth with his hand and makes shushing noises. ‘Please! Please!’

After a moment, Archie finds himself calming down somewhat. Or maybe his fear has just overwhelmed him so much, he cannot make another sound.

‘As your patient,’ Hook continues in a low voice, bending over Archie’s face, ‘the Dark One must’ve told you all manner of secrets.’ He removes his hand, but shifts even closer towards Archie’s face; the large, ice-blue eyes nearly filling up his entire vision. ‘Where is his dagger?’

‘I don’t know _anything_ about a dagger,’ Archie replies fervently, wondering where his courage is coming from.

Hook doesn’t say anything. His eyes jump between Archie’s who stares boldly back.

‘No, you don’t, do you?’ says Hook in a flat expressionless tone and moves away from him.

Archie feels his mouth moving but no words come out. Hook hunkers down and strokes his stubbly chin musingly, as though considering a different approach.

‘It’s his weakness,’ he explains, or maybe he’s just thinking aloud. He seems to be studying the planks of wood beneath his feet, then raises his eyebrows. ‘Now, tell me, does he have any others?’

He looks back up at Archie, who stares at him, but keeps his mouth shut. Hook breathes an unamused laugh, inhales deeply, almost like a sigh.

‘Very well,’ he says, and looks down before getting up again, as though steeling himself for something he really doesn’t want to do. Archie wouldn’t put it past him that he enjoys all this charade.

Again he goes right into Archie’s personal space, his face inches above his.

‘I’ve always wanted to dissect a cricket,’ he whispers, before suddenly moving upwards with his hook and pressing it ever so slightly against Archie’s forehead.

‘No!’ Archie exclaims, moving his head back and out of the way of the hook. The tip is just resting atop, never breaking the skin. ‘Wait,’ he gasps. ‘Wait. Please.’ He feels himself hyperventilating.

‘Ah…’ Hook whispers back, smiling. ‘That’s more like it.’ Then back to his normal voice, all business-like. ‘Now tell me, cricket. What is his weakness?’

*

Belle unlocks the door to the library under the clock tower, feeling happy that Rumple has confided in her, that he’s going to go find his son in the outside world. He will sprinkle Bae’s shawl with the magic potion he’s been working on and then he can cross the town border without losing his memories.

The book trolley is stacked full of books, and Belle picks up a few to start reshelving them. They belong to a section, which is at the back of the library. She stops in her tracks when in the semi-darkness she sees the figure of a man standing there, reading a book.

‘Uh, sorry,’ she says to him loudly, ‘the library’s not open yet.’ And then she wonders how the hell he even got in here, because the library door was locked.

The man looks up at her.

‘Oh, I’m not here for the books, luv,’ he says softly, replacing the book on the shelf the wrong way and smirks. His accent sounds English.

The man wears a leather coat. His whole attire is not from this world, but could be from hers. His hair is so dark it looks black in the gloom, his face unshaven, and he has a hook for his left hand, but Belle mostly remembers those eyes, big and blue underneath dark sinister brows.

‘You,’ she says, remembering the pain at her temple, when his knuckles connected with it, the searing headache when she woke up again. ‘You’re the one who broke into my cell at the queen’s palace.’ He smirks again, like a predator ready to pounce. She backs away and darts for the door.

Before she can reach it, he is already there. The only thing standing between them is the book trolley. Belle is determined not to let him see her fear.

‘You wanted to kill Rumplestiltskin.’

‘Oh, I still do,’ he says darkly, ‘but right now I’ll settle for you.’ He moves to go around the trolley, but before he can do that, Belle pushes it over, and the trolley and the books land on top of him, bringing him to the floor.

The way to the door now barred, Belle turns around and makes for the lift instead. He would not know how it works, she hopes as she presses the button for the heavy doors to open. They do right away, but she can see over her shoulder that he’s almost back on his feet. She runs into the elevator and presses the closed button as the man leaps over the trolley and dives for her. The doors close shut just in time.

She hears him outside, banging against them. He clearly doesn’t know how to open them, but Belle is afraid he might wear them down eventually. With all the vigour he smashes his hand into them, the lift seems to be shaking.

She fumbles for her mobile and calls Rumple’s number.

 _‘Hey, Belle,’_ her lover’s voice comes comfortingly through from the other end.

‘Rumple,’ she says as the man bangs against the door once more. Luckily he still hasn’t figured out that one of the buttons opens the doors. ‘I’m… I’m in the elevator… There’s a man in the library, he broke in. He wants to kill me.’

_’Belle, you… you’re breaking up. Who’s in the library?’_

‘A pirate,’ she replies.

_‘Belle?’_

‘He’s missing a hand.’

‘ _Belle?’_

‘Hello?’ she says, as she hears the sound of the call disconnecting. The reception in the lift must be very bad.

All she can hope for now is that Rumple has heard enough to come here in time.

The banging continues, then stops. After several minutes it resumes. She can hear the sound has changed, maybe he’s getting through after all, maybe he has found something to break down the doors with. There is another bang, and then she can just feel that the doors will open, and they do.

She braces herself for the monster behind the doors. What will he do to her? Strangle her? Beat her to death? Or impale her on that hook of his? She will not be scared though, she will look him in the eyes, to make him see how much she despises him.

The doors slide open, and behind them is not the pirate. It is Rumple.

‘Belle!’ he says.

She gasps in relief and flings herself into his arms, sure she would collapse if he weren’t there to hold her up.

‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ he says and puts his coat around her. ‘Here.’

She hasn’t even realised how cold she is, but she really is. It must be the aftermath of the shock. She looks around, halfway expecting to see the pirate’s corpse lying around, because unbridled violence that is after all what Rumple is known for.

‘W… where is he?’ she asks, when she sees no such thing.

‘I don’t know,’ Rumple replies, and she is inclined to believe him. ‘But you’ve nothing to fear, I’m here now.’

*

A few minutes later after Belle told him everything that happened, Rumple is hastening along as fast as his limp allows him to, and she hurries after him.

‘Where are you going?’

‘The shop,’ Rumple replies.

‘Why?’ She still feels very cold, despite wearing his coat around her shoulders. The shock has not worn off yet.

‘Well, let’s just say there are many wonderful things in there that I could use to make sure that pirate never comes near you again.’

Something in his tone tells her it would be better for all of them, if those things never came into use. She knows that Rumple is not beyond torture or even vigilante execution and that doesn’t go down well with the law in this country; she doesn’t want him to get into trouble or darken his soul again.

‘Rumple, no,’ she says quickly. ‘We need to report this to the sheriff. They’ll take care of him.’ He throws her a look as though he thinks she’s crazy to think that. ‘You’re so close to finding your son. Please, don’t let your hatred for this man get in the way of that.’

‘But he tried to harm you,’ he objects almost desperately.

‘But why?’ Belle asks curiously. ‘What… what happened between you two?’

‘Belle,’ he says slowly, deliberately, and heaves a deep sigh. ‘This is really not your concern.’

‘He attacked me! It most definitely _is_ my concern!’ she says passionately, turning around to face him and stops walking, standing in his way. Does he really after all this time still think she’s the just the compliant maiden who waits patiently for the man to save her every time, never questioning his actions?

Rumple looks at her for a while, mouthing wordlessly as though trying to make up his mind on how to begin, or like he’s sizing her up, how much she can stomach. Then he nods as if bracing himself, takes a furtive look around, and throws his hand up in a gesture of mute despair.

‘Many years ago, I was married to a woman named Milah… until Hook crossed our paths.’

‘She was… Baelfire’s mother?’

‘Yeah,’ he says slowly, ‘and because of that marauding cur, he grew up without her… He took my wife, he took Bae’s mother, so I took his hand.’ He lifts his left hand to emphasise his words.

Then he keeps on walking, as though trying to run from the memory. Belle follows him. She can’t let it go yet, she wants to understand more.

‘That’s… why he came after me,’ she concludes. The pirate wants revenge, because Rumple maimed him. That much is easy. ‘But, er, what about… what about her?’ she asks, trying to be delicate and hoping that the memory isn't too painful. She imagines it has been a few years, but the hatred in Rumple for the pirate appears to be just as fresh in his mind as Hook’s is for Rumple, and she feels that Rumple has more justification somehow.

They have reached the shop. Belle turns around to look at him as he bends over to unlock the door. He avoids her eyes.

‘What… what did he do?’ There are a lot of thoughts in her head now, about what a pirate might do to the wife of the man who cut off his hand.

Rumple doesn’t answer. He looks at her helplessly, as though pleading with her to release him. She takes his hand in hers and looks deeply into his eyes.

‘Rumple, you can… you can tell me anything.’

He smiles now in a sad way.

‘She died,’ he says eventually. ‘That’s all that matters.’

He moves to open the door. Belle stays behind before following, her mind reeling with possibilities of what exactly happened.

*

Inside the shop Rumple stops and looks around. Belle comes in after him and gasps.

Everything that hasn’t been nailed down lies littered on the floor. Someone has done a thorough job of searching through his possessions without any regard for its value, because many things have been smashed to pieces. That is a pirate’s handiwork from the looks of it, but what were they searching for?

‘What happened here?’

‘Hook!’ Rumple replies through clenched teeth and walks towards the place behind the counter, a terrible suspicion growing inside him. ‘This is why he attacked you.’

Belle gives a short breathy laugh, devoid of mirth. ‘To get you out of the store. What did he want?’

The picture behind the counter hangs slightly away from the wall. Who would know to look here? Hook couldn’t have known, unless he guessed... no, someone must have told him.

*

Through his spyglass Killian witnesses as the crocodile checks behind the picture where he knows the safe is. The girl steps up behind him, as he looks distressed beyond words. Killian feels a grim sense of satisfaction at the sight. Distress is only one of the feelings he wants the Dark One to experience.

He hears scuttling footsteps behind him.

‘You have it, Mr Smee?’ he asks his first mate without turning around and folds up his spyglass.

Smee holds out Baelfire’s shawl to him.

‘What is it, captain?’

Killian takes it.

‘It’s the end of the crocodile’s hope,’ he says softly, looking back over at the place where the shop is. ‘Now he’s trapped here.’ He wonders why a feeling of triumph at his achievement fails to appear, but maybe it’s just too early, and he needs to fully succeed, to face the man, to feel anything other than restlessness, bitterness, hatred to fill up the emptiness inside him.

‘Thank you, Smee,’ he says to the older man. ‘You can go.’ He needs to return to his ship to prepare for the final encounter, and he can’t have Smee knowing his whereabouts. There’s also a cricket that needs to be taken care of.

*

The model of a pirate ship is standing on display on top of one of his cabinets. Why he hasn’t got rid of it sooner he doesn’t understand, but now is a good time as any.

‘Rumple!’ Belle shouts as he knocks it over with his cane, trying to smash it to bits. ‘Rumple! Stop it!’ She grabs hold of his shoulder, as he moves forward to inflict more damage. ‘Stop! Please!’ she pleads with him, and he feels himself calm down somewhat.

Only Belle could have that effect on him. Induce the wish inside him to be a better man, just for her.

‘No, you’re right,’ he pants, exhausted from his outburst. ‘I’ll have to retrieve what’s mine.’

She lets go of him, and he walks over to the door. He has to find the pirate and make him pay for what he did. Time has come to finally take revenge on that scumbag. The son of a whore has taken such a long time to die, Rumple will be glad to hustle things along for him now.

But Belle doesn’t leave his side. She tries to walk around him.

‘Let me… let me help you,’ she says, and stops him.

‘This is my fight!’ he says loudly.

‘And this is _my_ fault,’ she yells. Rumple looks at her incredulously. How is any of this her fault? ‘If Hook had never attacked me, you never would’ve left the shop.’

Putting aside the fact that it’s nobody’s fault but Hook’s, Rumple says heatedly, ‘How do you propose we get the shawl back?! Have you duelled with a pirate before? How _exactly_ are you gonna help me?’ If he finds Hook, he can destroy him with his magic. This is the only way, because Hook would never fight fair either, despite putting on a show about being honourable, he never is. Calling oneself a man of honour is one thing, acting on it another. At least Rumple admits he doesn’t care about it; it’s only about the principle, because Hook has to be wiped out of existence. Rumple swore he would kill him, if he ever saw him again, and now he will make sure he will.

‘Well, I’m not gonna sit here and do nothing!’

‘No,’ says Rumple, calmer now. ‘You’re gonna go back to the library, lock the door, and wait for me to dispense with this problem.’

‘And if I don’t?’ Belle retorts. ‘You’ll… you’ll cast some spell that gives me no choice?’

‘No!’ Rumple breathes slowly, deliberately, like a slow burn in his heart, furious beyond belief, yet he knows it’s not good to direct his anger at the wrong person. ‘I trust you’ll do as I wish, as you trust me to be a better man.’ She looks away from him, and he fears he’s going to fail her now, like he did Bae. ‘Belle, please! Hook has maybe cost me the chance of finding my son! I don’t want to lose you, too!’ He nearly bursts into tears now, and he can’t have that.

‘Here, look.’ He moves away from her, to the back of one of the cabinets, and pulls out his gun. ‘I want you to take this.’ It’s very small, ideal for delicate hands like hers. When she sees it, she hesitates. He knows she abhors violence in any form. ‘Just in case Hook is stupid enough to come after you again.’ He’s sure that Hook will do just that, because he’ll go after the weakest link to draw Rumple out, but he hopes he will find him before that happens. Ignoring her reservations, he shows how to fire the gun. ‘Point this, pull this trigger, and the gun’ll do the rest for you. All right?’ He places it into her hands. She just looks at it. ‘All right?!’

She nods quickly. ‘Yeah… yes…!’

While she’s still looking at the gun, he turns around towards the door.

‘W… wait!’ she calls and before he can leave, halts him with a hand on his shoulder. She looks deeply into his eyes. ‘Promise me that you going after Hook is just about getting the shawl back.’

Rumple looks at her, unsure if he should tell her that she can forget it. He decides it’s better not to answer at all, and leaves the shop, because he cannot stand the look of disappointment in her eyes when she truly understands his intentions, but he also doesn’t want to lie to her again.

*

“ _Wait for me to dispense with this problem,_ ” he’s said to her. Like he expects her to do just what she hates; be passive, waiting to be rescued, while others do the heroics for her. Of course, in this case she doesn’t have to wait to be rescued, because she isn’t in danger. She does not expect Hook to return for her now. He’s got what he wants and if he really is that determined to kill her, he would have stayed here longer, trying to get through the elevator doors. Unless he’s still here…

Belle looks up and around from the library floor, where she’s sitting, sorting through the books that have fallen from the trolley. No, if he were here he would have attacked her by now.

She’s loath to admit it to herself, but if Rumple really decides to go after the pirate, he will kill him. Quite apart from the fact that she doesn’t want Rumple to kill anyone, she doesn’t want Hook to die. She believes that violence is never the answer, and she’s sure that the sheriff could very well take care of the" _problem_ ", too.

It would be great if she can find Hook… No, better just the shawl, before Rumple does, and convince him, that the shawl itself really is all he needs. Then she would have averted the confrontation, and Hook could just be arrested when the time came.

She puts another book on top of the stack, then sees something on the floor underneath it. It looks like a rattle made from string, with a heavy round bulge at one end and a sort of sling at the other. Since that hasn’t been here before, the pirate must have dropped it. She goes over to the computer to check out where the books about seafaring are located.

For some reason even though Belle has not exactly been cursed, before she knew who she was, she felt like she belonged in this world. She knows about phones, elevators, and computers, as if she has been living in Storybrooke all her life.

The book she’s looking for is in section 623 on Military & Nautical Engineering. She scans the shelf and finds it; “From the keel up: a nautical guide”. She flips through the pages until she gets to the part about knot-tying. The item in question, Hook’s knot, is called a Monkey’s Fist, which can be used for the rigging.

She smiles to herself triumphantly. ‘Hook came here on his ship.’

*

He doesn’t use the streets to get around Storybrooke. Now that he finally got to leave the docks without Cora, he doesn’t want to risk being seen. He has realised that here he is the one who sticks out because of what he wears. Though no force in the world could make him switch his clothes for the rags the people in Storybrooke are wearing, he knows not to draw attention to himself. Why would he want to? He’s not here to alert anyone, especially Emma, to his presence.

Speaking of Emma…

From his elevated vantage point, the roofs, Killian has a pretty good overview of the town, and if he chooses the right path and moves quietly enough, he can get back and forth completely undetected. He’s not that high up and he can see Swan clearly without his spyglass. He crouches down, because if he can see her that easily, she might be able to see him, too. She’s changed the clothes she’d worn in the Enchanted Forest. The new ones are rather sombre, most of them black, but he knows that isn’t because she suddenly decided that she like him prefers plain-coloured clothes all of a sudden; she’s in mourning because of the cricket’s death. Well, then she’s going to be in for a big surprise later.

She’s also not alone. With her is a white dog with black spots, and a little boy, about ten or eleven years old, who walks the dog on a lead. That must be her son, Henry.

Killian feels a weirdly constricting sensation in his throat and in his chest, but ignores it. He wants to memorise everything he can about her before she’s out of sight, because as he now realises this is most likely the last time he’ll be seeing her. He wonders if his body will ever be found, and if she’ll be sad in case she finds out he’s gone.

Oh, hang on, he thinks, shaking himself out of his melancholy thoughts. Isn’t that Belle, the beauty, walking down the street? He would have imagined the Dark One locked her in somewhere; after all that’s what he does with his most prized possessions. Must be the lass has given him the slip. She seems to be locked up rather frequently, so it stands to reason that she’s fed up with it.

He realises she heads in the direction of the harbour. Well, she certainly is smarter than Rumplestiltskin because he is out and about somewhere else, but not near the sea where you might expect a pirate to hang around.

Killian gets up from his crouch, and swiftly and silently climbs over Storybrooke’s rooftops towards his own most prized possession, a ship.

*

What Hook doesn’t see, is a small squat man with a red woolly hat hurrying along another street. He’s carrying a duffle bag stuffed full with what he could scramble together in the short time. After talking with his captain, Smee understands now he has the means to leave Storybrooke and since he has nothing that keeps him here, he will.

He passes the bar, the Rabbit Hole, in direction of the parking lot and before he even becomes fully aware who’s standing there in front of him, his body is slammed back against the wall, as the Dark One uses his magic to stop him.

‘Leaving town, Mr Smee?’ he says in an ominous voice. He slowly turns around, his hand still in the air, now using it to choke him. When the Dark One fully faces him, Smee again sees the hatred and contempt in his features. ‘I spared your life… and this is how you repay me?’ His voice becomes louder in his anger. ‘That object you stole from me… I want it back.’

Through his constricted throat, Smee bursts out, ‘I gave it to Hook.’

‘And where is he?’

‘I don’t know,’ Smee slurs, thinking that he will surely be strangled in place of the captain, and wishes he had pressed him for his location. Then again, when did Hook ever do something he didn’t want to do? ‘W… we met on a rooftop. He didn’t tell me anything.’ Apart from the fact, that he told him that the magic on the hat enables him to leave Storybrooke.

‘And why would he?’ Gold asks, his voice laced both with derision and disgust. ‘Hook knows exactly what you are, Mr Smee…’ He says the next words, slowly, revelling in the abuse. ‘A snivelling… rat.’

Then he turns his hand in that way, he normally uses to snap someone’s neck, but Smee doesn’t die. He shrinks and then he doesn’t know who or what or where he is. Everything is dark.

Then suddenly everything is bright again, but it all looks so different.

A huge voice from above him says, ‘Now scurry off.’

And he does just that, because there is a human here, and humans don’t like rats.

*

He has to hand it to the girl, she is quick-witted. From a safe distance he watches her through his spyglass. She’s already found the right pier and is standing right next to the ship. Of course, she can’t see it, because it’s invisible. Killian himself is not completely sure where it is exactly, and he feels a little worried, like what if it’s somehow not there anymore? The thought frightens him more than he would have believed possible, but why? It’s not like he’s gonna need it later.

The girl stands around, looking like she’s listening to something; she probably hears the creaking of the rigging. Killian spots the three gulls circling above the mast, before Belle does. She looks up at the sound, and one of them even perches on the mast now. It’s an eerie sight, but Killian is glad to have confirmation.

Belle throws sand onto the pier and discovers the gangway. Smart girl. She carefully steps onto it and begins her climb. After a few moments she disappears along with the ship.

Killian folds up the spyglass and leaves his hiding place. It’s the only time he has to walk out in the open, but there isn’t much going on, because most residents stayed home today to mourn the cricket’s death.

He slowly crosses the open space of the harbour towards the pier, wary of unexpected encounters, but he’s lucky and can board his ship unseen.

While he gets his bearings, he hears sounds from below deck. It’s Belle and the doctor talking. So she’s found him. Killian remains standing halfway concealed by the mast to see if she will come up with or without him to get some help.

Who comes up on deck, however, is just the doctor. It appears the girl decided to stay and search for the shawl. Well, she won’t find it here.

He steps forward in the doctor’s way. The man nearly shrieks out in shock, but Killian covers his mouth with his hand.

‘Shush, shush, shush,’ he says. ‘It looks like you’ve got yourself a saviour.’

‘Please, don’t hurt Belle,’ Dr Hopper says when Killian removes his hand. ‘She hasn’t’ done anything wrong.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Killian says slowly. ‘She boarded my ship uninvited after all. Did she tell you to get help?’

‘Sh… she told me to get Mr Gold.’

‘Oh, all right then.’ Killian sighs. ‘Go on, tell the crocodile I’m here. I’ll be waiting.’

He shoves the cricket away from himself. The doctor stumbles a little, looks back at him a little unsure, then scrambles off board.

Killian glares after him thoughtfully and mutters, ‘It’s Gold or me this time.’

 

**3**

Now alone, Belle takes a look around the cabin. There are six bunks inside. She guesses this is where the simple pirates used to sleep, certainly not the captain. One of the beds looks recently used, and Belle wonders by whom.

In the beds she won’t find the shawl, however. There is a shelf with a sort of desk and bench in front squeezed into the narrow space between beds and door. She puts the gun Rumple has given her aside and roots through the contents until she finds a promising-looking chest. She pulls it out onto the desk. It’s locked, of course, and Belle doesn’t know how to pick locks, but she hopes that maybe the key is somewhere around here, so she begins rummaging through the shelf again. Inside a goblet on the lowest shelf there really is a key. But it would be a strange kind of luck if that’s the one that fits…

Oh, all right. It _does_ fit. Excitedly, she opens the lid, but inside is nothing more than several golden coins and a bell.

‘Looking for this?’ a deep voice speaks from behind her, and she whirls around.

Hook is leaning casually against the doorframe, Baelfire’s shawl draped over his hook. He doesn’t even look at her.

‘Er,’ says Belle, stepping over to face him and points at the shawl. ‘That doesn’t belong to you.’

‘Oh, it does now,’ he replies and looks up at her smirking.

Out of the corner of her eye, Belle sees the gun is still lying where she left it. She lunges for it, but Hook is quicker. He clicks his tongue, then chuckles darkly.

‘Oh,’ he says again, lifting the gun up in front of his eyes as though he’s short-sighted and examines it with interest. It looks really tiny in his hand. ‘My dear Belle, you should’ve stayed with your books,’ he continues, not taking his eyes off the gun, and frowns. Belle wonders if he even knows what it is. ‘Real life can get so…’ He points the gun at her head, ‘messy.’

She stares back at him in defiance.

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she says hotly, and the anger she feels inside her gives her more courage than maybe she should have in this situation. She points at the shawl again. ‘And I’m not leaving without that.’

‘Well, I admire your loyalty,’ he says, sounding at least partly genuine. ‘But helping Rumplestiltskin… I’m afraid you’re fighting a lost cause.’ He lays the shawl on the desk, just where the gun had been before.

‘He needs that shawl to find his son,’ Belle says imploringly, wondering if he even has a better nature she can appeal to.

‘What makes you think his son wants to be found?’ he says mockingly. ‘Hmm? Doing that boy a favour.’

‘Have you not hurt Rumple enough?’

‘Ah,’ he says, lifting his hook and wagging it a bit. ‘I’ve hurt him?’

‘You stole his wife,’ says Belle indignantly, again wondering and actually not wanting to know what it was he did to her.

Hook looks down at the floor. ‘Tell me something, luv,’ he whispers, taking a few deliberate steps forward, until he’s standing right in front of her. His face is so close, it’s almost as if he’s about to kiss her. ‘If a woman comes to you,’ his nose touches hers, ‘ _begs_ you to take her away, is that theft?’ Belle fights the urge to back away. His breath smells of rum.

‘Why would she leave him?’ she asks him.

He looks her in the eyes, still not moving away. The blue irises shimmer angrily now.

‘Because he was a coward,’ he says through gritted teeth. ‘And because she loved me.’

Belle has a feeling that he speaks the truth. He really is upset, so he might not have been the one who killed her. She also has her doubts about him raping her. Maybe Rumple is right, and Milah really just died.

He pulls back, returns to the desk where the shawl is lying, and touches it with his hook. There’s a glum look in his eyes now.

‘Should’ve burned this the moment I acquired it,’ he grumbles, as though speaking to himself.

‘Why didn’t you?’ she asks curiously.

‘Because she made it,’ he says quietly.

Belle can’t help but feeling a bit sorry for him. He appears to really have loved her. Maybe there is a better nature in him to appeal to after all.

‘I’m sorry she died, but… but vengeance? Vengeance won’t bring her back.’

He chuckles lightly, bitterly.

‘Died?’ he repeats. ‘Like it was some kind of accident. Is that what he told you?’

Again he approaches her, not in that mock seductive way as before, but brandishing the gun, mad and intimidating.

‘He… yeah, well, he didn’t say…’

‘Of course not. Of course, he’d leave out the most important detail of her passing.’

He glares at her. His mood swings make him highly unpredictable and even more dangerous. She really needs to get out of here. She needs to get the shawl, but a tiny part inside of her, a part she’s slightly ashamed of, hopes that Rumple will be here soon to save her.

‘And, er,’ she says, ‘what would that be?’

‘He killed her,’ he says slowly, his eyes boring into hers. Then he points the gun at her heart. She can’t stop herself from trembling. ‘He ripped out her heart and crushed it right in front of me.’

The muzzle digs painfully into her chest. She shakes her head, refusing to believe.

‘No,’ she says and speaking the word resolves her belief in Rumple.

‘Oh, yes,’ he says promptly.

‘No!’ Even though she says it louder this time, she feels less certain, because she’s afraid she will stop believing. Why should Hook lie about it? Why should he even care if her faith in Rumple is threatening to waver?

‘ _Yes_ ,’ he says, drawing out the last letter in a hiss. Then he raises the gun to her chin. ‘He would do anything…’ He tilts the gun, and Belle is forced to move her head back a little, exposing her throat, ‘ _anything_ to hold onto his power.’ He moves the gun away and walks past her over to the opening to the hold where he had kept Archie prisoner. ‘Why do you think anyone who’s ever got close to him has either run away…’

Belle tries to get as much distance between herself and him, when his back is turned, and makes it as far as the door.

‘Or been killed?’

She hears the gun click ominously and turns around. He stands facing her now, the gun pointed at her again.

‘Now, what makes you think you’re any different?’ he whispers, almost sounding sympathetic. ‘Tell me something, darling. Why would you want to fight for a man like that?’

He looks a little as though he really feels bad for her, but it’s hard to accept pity from a man who holds you at gunpoint. The way he’s positioned himself, gives her an idea though.

‘Because I still see good in him,’ she says fervently, ‘because I believe he’s changed, because his heart is _true_. And yours?’

Hook cocks an eyebrow, as though he already knows what she’s about to say, and he’s not impressed.

‘Yours is rotten,’ she finishes in disgust.

Then she grabs the oar, which hangs from the ceiling, at the butt end and shoves the flat end in his direction. It hits him hard on the head, and he falls down into the hold.

Belle snatches up the shawl and runs onto the deck. She’s up by the helm and hurries down the narrow steps to the main deck. Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, the man jumps out in front of her.

‘How the hell did you…?’

‘Oh, I know this ship like the back of my…’ he says lazily, gestures at his hook, and smirks. ‘Well, you know.’ Then he gets serious and points at the shawl. ‘I suggest you give that back to me now.’

‘Or what?’ a man says from behind Hook.

He looks around. Rumple has come on board. He leans on his cane almost unconcernedly, not afraid at all.

‘Oh,’ says the pirate and turns his back on Belle.

She uses the opportunity to walk towards the other side of the deck to stand a little closer to Rumple.

‘You look different in this world, crocodile,’ says Hook, spreading his arms wide in a mock welcoming gesture. ‘Like the coward I met so long ago… limp and all,’ he finishes in a flat voice.

‘And yet,’ says Rumple and moves forward a few paces, ‘you still can’t kill me.’

‘Let’s have it, Dark One,’ Hook whispers dangerously. ‘What magic are you gonna hide behind today?’

Rumple stands facing him and laughs a short humourless laugh. ‘Oh no, not magic.’

He lifts his cane and delivers a fierce blow across Hook’s face. The man falls backward onto a raised part of the deck, and Rumple strikes out again, hitting him relentlessly, like he had done before in his store, like this isn’t a human being he’s beating up, but an object he wants to demolish.

‘Rumple! Hey!’ Belle shouts, running over to him to stop him. She doesn’t dare get too close though, in case he accidentally hits her instead. ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!’

Rumple doesn’t ease up the thrashing, while Hook is yelling in pain. Oddly enough, the pirate doesn’t even try to move out of the way, let alone defend himself.

‘Let’s go,’ she repeats.

‘No, not yet, Belle,’ Rumple says and takes a big swing, bringing the cane down hard.

‘This,’ Belle says, holding out the shawl to him, ‘this is what you came for. This is what’s gonna get you back to Bae.’

Rumple has stopped, breathing heavily. He looks conflicted.

‘Ah,’ sighs Hook. His voice sounds rough. He’s bleeding from his nose and from a cut above his left eye. ‘You’re wasting your breath, love.’ The words fill her with dread, and a tiny moment she believes him. ‘He can’t resist. He has to prove that he’s not a _coward_ ,’ he almost shouts now. She’s not sure if he’s not about to cry.

But she also begins to comprehend what he’s doing, even though she cannot relate to that at all.

‘You might wanna turn away, Belle,’ Rumple says, playing right into Hook’s hand, and swings back his cane. ‘This isn’t gonna be pretty.’

He hits Hook with it several more times. Belle feels exhausted by his brutality, like she lost all her power to help him, to help them.

Hook is screaming, and it takes her a while to make out the words.

‘Do it! Do it! Do it! Kill me!’

Belle’s heart contracts a little. Why would he say that? She can’t help herself again, she feels a bit sorry for him. That is until he utters a cruel laugh and directs his next words at her.

‘He has to show you how powerful he is!’

‘No, Rumple! This… this is what he wants… to destroy every bit of good in you.’

She thinks he doesn’t really want to die, he just wants to turn Rumple’s heart black again.

Rumple has stopped the beating again and looks at her doubtfully.

‘Rip my heart out,’ Hook says, pulling his shirt to the side, baring the skin underneath. ‘Kill me like you did Milah, then I’ll finally be reunited with her.’

Rumple glares at him, drops his cane, and looks back up at Belle. His face is a mask of glee, but not real glee. It’s devoid of any semblance of humour.

‘He has to die, Belle,’ he says and lunges himself on top of the pirate, his fingers ready to dig into his chest.

‘No! No, he doesn’t! There’s still good in you.’

Rumple pauses and looks up at her. He’s still about to rip Hook’s heart out though, and the man groans in pain. She has to get through to him somehow

‘I see it. I’ve always seen it. Please,’ she gulps down her tears, ‘please, show me I’m not wrong.’

Rumple looks away from her and down at Hook. There’s an expression on his face, as though he cannot believe what he’s about to do, like he lets his price get away. He looks back up at her, and she can see he’s holding back his tears, too. She realises she loves him so much; and her love and his love is what’s going to save him.

He releases his hand from Hook’s chest, and the man sighs in relief, gasping for breath and spluttering, as though he had been nearly drowning. Belle sighs, too, but in a different kind of relief.

‘You take your little ship,’ Rumple says to the pirate, hatred etched on his features, pointing a gloved finger at his face, ‘and sail until you fall off the edge of the world. I never wanna see you again!’ Then he slaps Hook, clambers off him, and picks up his cane.

‘Let’s go,’ he says to Belle, who grabs his hand.

Rumple pauses a moment to glare at the pirate, but allows her to pull him away.

*

It’s night again. He feels like his entire life comprises of nights with small interludes of daylight. He’s used to it. During the time of the Dark Curse, the area that had been spared from it remained under the smoke, which blotted out the sun, so it really was always night or gloaming. Hook doesn’t mind the night. It goes with his black heart.

No, not black, he thinks, taking another swig of rum. What did the girl say it was?

_Yours is rotten._

He hopes it isn’t, but it probably is. What’s the point then, he asks himself, of even going on?

He fiddles with the tiny gun in his hand. It had fallen from his grip when she hit him with the oar, but he’s retrieved it since then. There’s still a dull throb in his head where the oar had connected with his skull, but he’s aching all over anyway, so he hardly feels it.

He takes another drink. Can you even drown your sorrows when you don’t have a proper heart, that is, do you even have sorrows to drown? Killian doesn’t care and drinks more. His head is swimming, he isn’t quite drunk, but maybe he’s concussed.

When the flask is empty, he allows it to clatter onto the deck.

He walks over to the railing on the portside and looks out into the black water. It’s like a gorge, ready to swallow him whole, if he’s foolish enough to fall into it. It laps against the Jolly Roger’s hull, looking thick and sluggish, more sludge than water. And he’s _gonna_ fall into it, isn’t he?

Killian steps up onto the rail, holding himself upright with his hook on a rope, his hand still occupied with the gun. If the gun doesn’t finish him off, the water surely will.

He presses the muzzle against his temple and gulps.

Belle didn’t believe he really wanted to die. She’d said he wanted to destroy everything that’s good inside the crocodile. Well, there isn’t anything good left inside him to destroy, is there? Maybe Killian just _wanted_ the Dark One to kill him, had she even considered that?

Well, no, of course not. She’s such a good person, she has never had so much self-loathing inside her, that she feels her chest can’t contain it. Like if there is no outside force, like a fight to the death accompanied with real physical pain, the inside would just explode out, leaving a lifeless shell behind. In a few minutes he’ll be lifeless, too, floating in the waters of Storybrooke harbour.

Who would find him? He hopes it won’t be Swan or her boy.

He looks out over the water again. There are those great white birds, as though summoned by his miserable thoughts, gliding like ghosts over the surface, like they did the night he first arrived here.

No. He steps down. That is not the way. He sits down on the higher part of the deck and thinks. Maybe there is some other way of ruining Rumplestiltskin’s life. Maybe there even is a way to destroy the last bit of good in him.

*

Rumple parks the car by the town line, but doesn’t get out. He sighs and holds up the shawl to look at it.

‘This would have been lost,’ he says to Belle, ‘if it wasn’t for you, Belle… _I_ would be lost… After everything you’ve learned about me… after everything I’ve done… why haven’t you given up on me?’

He finally turns to her. She looks back at him with all the warmth in his world, then she looks away, as though considering her answer.

‘I learned a long time ago,’ she says at length, turning her beautiful eyes back on him, ‘that when you find something that’s worth fighting for, you never give up.’ Her voice hitches a little, sounding like she’s about to cry.

Rumple smiles, feeling slightly woeful, because he will have to do this without her so soon after he has found her again. She smiles back.

They get out of the car, and walk slowly side by side up to the town line. She’s holding the shawl, because he has the bottle in one hand and the cane in the other. They stop directly in front of the line. Rumple unstoppers the bottle containing the rest of the potion and pours it over the shawl. The magic washes over the fabric, turning it momentarily blue. When the magic has seeped in, Rumple turns to her and bows his head. She drapes the shawl around his shoulders and holds the ends together like she would like to tie up the ends or like she wants to pull him towards her.

‘Okay,’ she breaths, laughing silently and smiles again.

He can tell she’s nervous, and even though he doesn’t want her to feel any discomfort at all, he still can’t help feeling giddy inside his old, old heart, that she has so much affection for him, for him of all people.

‘Here we go.’

He turns around and, holding onto her as long as he can, he slowly limps over the town line. Right behind it he stops. Instantly the force of the magic pulses through him, like a little electric shock, not exactly painful, but unpleasant. He feels disoriented for a moment, dizzy.

Where is he? What’s he doing here? Why is he out on the street in the middle of the night?

He turns and sees a pretty girl standing there, looking at him anxiously. No, not just any girl. It’s as if the sight of her triggers something powerful inside him.

‘Belle,’ he says, pointing at her, when it all comes rushing back.

She laughs cheerfully, relief all over her face.

‘It… it worked!’ she says, grasping his hand with both of his and pulls him towards her, so that she’s still standing just at the inner edge with him at the outer.

‘Yes, it did,’ he agrees.

‘Now, you can find your son,’ she says.

He nods, but feels tears in his eyes, too, and they are not only tears of happiness.

‘Oh, Belle, I so wish you were coming with me.’

His words sober her a little, and she looks a bit more serious, ‘As do I, but… it doesn’t matter.’ She smiles again.

‘And why not?’

‘Because you’ll find him… and when you do… I’ll be here waiting for you when you get back.’

They lean into each other to kiss.

A shot rings through the night; the sharp sound boring itself through Rumple’s very heart. Belle stumbles forward into his arms, and he realises that he didn’t get hit.

She did.

‘Belle?’

She can’t stand upright, and it’s all he can do to gently lower her to the ground.

‘Belle!’

He looks into her anguished face, glad that she’s alive, but she got shot through the shoulder. She must be in so much pain.

‘Belle!’

Her face doesn’t only register pain. There’s confusion there.

‘Who… who’s Belle?’ she asks, her voice contorted in pain and fear. Fear of him.

Rumple dazedly looks at the blood on his fingers.

‘O no!’ He looks over his shoulder, and there’s the red line, indicating they both are beyond the border. ‘No, no, no!’ he whimpers, as the terrible truth begins to sink in.

‘Ah, fear not she’ll live,’ a dark cruel voice speaks from a few metres away. Rumple looks up and sees Hook standing there, a gun in his hand. The gun that was supposed to protect Belle from him. ‘She’ll just have no idea who _you_ are.’

‘What you’ve done cannot be undone!’ Rumple cries.

‘Well, now you finally know how it feels!’ the pirate shouts.

Rumple turns around, looking at him, feeling that he can finally truly see through him, see the worthless conniving bastard that he is. Something of that revelation must have shown on his face.

Hook spreads his arms wide. ‘Well, go ahead, crocodile, do your worst!’

Rumple lifts Belle up and carries her over onto the other side of the line.

‘Oh, I intend to,’ he says dangerously and summons a fireball to throw at the pirate.

Hook makes no movement to get out of the way, he just grins stupidly. Rumple will really enjoy making him burn.

The sound of tyres screeching from behind alerts him. He turns and sees a car hurtling down the street towards them at full pelt. He throws himself over Belle and rolls both of them to safety.

Then he hears the loud hectic crash of something large hitting bumper and windshield in close succession. He looks around just in time to see a black figure flying over the car. The pirate slips off the roof on the other side and lands in a heap near the road.

The car itself swerves and crashes into a boulder, which brings it to a stop.

Rumple stares at it, when he realises something extraordinary. The car came from outside Storybrooke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, if you've got so far.  
> I hope you enjoyed it, but at any rate, it'll be great if you could leave a comment.  
> The title is inspired by a chapter in Peter Pan, which is called "Hook or me this time" obviously.
> 
> I also have to assume that Rumple told Archie about his son (maybe he really did and I just forgot), and Archie in turn was forced to tell Hook. It makes sense that Bae left Neverland after Hook, therefore Hook would have no other way of knowing that he is here, too, but he does not act surprised at all when Belle tells him Rumple is looking for him here. Get it? If I made a mistake in calculating or there is someone else who might have told Hook about Bae, please tell me!
> 
> There will be about four or five more chapters, which I haven't written yet, and it may take a little longer until I update, but if you've enjoyed it so far, bear with me, because I'm really trying to make it good (I hope it is), so that's why it always takes so long.  
> The next chapter, I imagine, will be less depressing.  
> Thank you again! You're the best!


	5. Jelly, Shelley, and Three Sheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the crash, what happens in the hospital and around it.
> 
>    
>  _He carries the milky white globe out into the shop where the light is better. In the wee hours he doesn’t expect to get any surprise visitors who don’t already know about the globe, even if Storybrooke residents are notoriously wont to ignore his closed sign, but the door is magically sealed at any rate. The globe is surprisingly heavy, despite its fragile appearance. It isn’t after all merely something like a huge white bauble or a hollow globe. The magic inside it, Rumple reasons, is what makes it so heavy._  
>  _The spike at the top of the bow, which holds the globe in place, is pretty sharp. Rumple lowers his forefinger onto it and lets it prick him deeply. A magic user is much less worried about injuries, an immortal magician doesn’t need to worry about them at all._  
>  _He lets one scarlet drop fall onto the white surface. The blood spreads thin across the globe, wafting like crimson clouds, forming gradually a map of the world. An area at the east coast of North America is marked in a deeper shade of red than the rest. Rumple smiles when he realises it’s not far from Storybrooke._  
>  _‘Bae.’_  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a Hallowe'en-like chapter what with the appearance of Doctor Frankenstein and the mention of monsters. It has a tiny creepy atmosphere, too, which I hoped I conveyed here a little bit.
> 
> Even if it didn't, I'm pretty chuffed I managed to upload it today of all days.
> 
> Don't let me deter you... Please enjoy!

**1**

He is blinded by a light brighter than the sun. The Dark One’s only a few feet away from him, ready to end his miserable existence, but suddenly he’s out of his sight, and that fast, sleek, silver horseless carriage is upon him. Killian is too slow or the thing too fast. He sees it coming towards him, and then he sees nothing at all.

Next thing he knows, he wakes up, gasping for breath. For a moment, he thinks it was just a dream, but it wasn’t. In his head he sees the carriage coming towards him again, the angry glaring lights, like the eyes of a wild beast, rendering him helpless to its wrath and ploughing him down. He doesn’t remember exactly what happened, how he ended up here on the ground in the mud and the rain, but it wasn’t a dream. His chest hurts. His head hurts. His legs. And it’s all worse than the way he felt when the crocodile had beaten him to a pulp.

He gets the vague feeling he had been flung through the air, landed on something hard, and then fallen to the ground, but both the haziness and the thought that that thing could just toss him up like a ragdoll don’t really help with calming him down. He’s terrified and disoriented. He has never been so frightened just for his own sake.

Was it a carriage or a beast? He tries to look around for it in case it will attack once more to finish him off, but when he moves, the pain in his chest becomes so excruciating he blacks out again.

*

Belle is breathing heavily, looking like she wants nothing else but to run away from him, from the stranger. There is the sound of approaching sirens but Rumple is almost deaf to everything else.

‘Who are you?’ she pants. ‘What’s going on?’

He tries to calm her down, but when he leans forward to place a comforting hand on her, she shifts slightly to disengage herself from him, and then she squeals in pain, clutching her arm near the spot where she was shot. Rumple makes desperate shushing noises.

‘No, no,’ he says, when she tries to move again. ‘Let me! Let me…’ His hand is hovering above the wound and heals it. ‘All better. Good.’

It does not have the effect he wished for. Belle stares at him with much more fear.

‘ _How did you do that?_ ’ she asks, glaring up at him.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ he says in what he hopes is a reassuring voice.

‘Get away,’ she says, her voice trembling with fear and anger.

Another car pulls up, but Rumple doesn’t pay attention to it. His attention is still solely focused on his love.

‘Shush,’ he says, trying to convey calm. ‘Belle, please.’

He touches her, and she nearly kicks her legs out to ward him off.

‘What are you?!’ she yells, her voice wavering between hysteria and fury.

David Nolan runs over to them. ‘You okay?’ he asks him or her, Rumple cannot really tell.

He remembers there’s been a car crash, and the prince might be wondering if they had been involved in it, seeing as they are so close to the crash site, and he’s the deputy sheriff after all. Rumple realises whose car had just arrived, which means Sheriff Swan is probably not far away either.

David grabs him under the armpits and drags him to his feet. Rumple still isn’t sure if he thinks he’s been trying to hurt Belle or that he is the one who’s hurt. His crippled leg can hardly support him without his cane, so he’s weirdly glad for the assistance, no matter what the prince’s intentions are. He feels so helpless, so… worthless, the way Belle looks at him. Not only like he’s a stranger, but like he’s dangerous, someone who stalks her.

‘What’s going on?’ David asks slightly confused, as neither of them is really hurt.

Snow White kneels down in front of Belle, holding out her hands as though to placate her. She’s doing a much better job of it, too. Belle looks back at her, but just confused, not scared like she is of Rumple.

‘She crossed over the town line. She doesn’t remember,’ Rumple explains desperately. Saying it out loud hurts, too, because he has to admit to himself the awful truth, no point in denying it any longer. He thinks he’s going to collapse, but the prince holds him up.

Kneeling on the ground, Snow White looks up at him, a scandalised expression on her face, like he’s the one who’s done that to Belle. He feels like he is.

*

Emma’s on the phone with the hospital as she gets out. She looks around. There is a car, which crashed against a bolder. Mr Gold’s car is closer to the town line, and in front of it there are the man himself and Belle. A dark figure is lying on the muddy wet ground beside the road. It’s a man, and it looks like he’s the only one between the three people who’s really hurt.

‘I’m at the town line. Two people down.’ She makes a mental note that the car has to have been driven by _someone_ , and she doesn’t think it was the injured man or Gold or Belle somehow. ‘Maybe three. There’s a car pretty banged up with…’ She squints her eyes to read the license tag. ‘Pennsylvania plate.’ Then she waits until the person on the other line tells her an ambulance is on its way.

‘Okay, thanks.’ She hangs up and looks at the figure on the ground.

He’s moving, looking like he’s trying to get up, but is too injured to find purchase on the slippery ground. She walks over to help, looks down, and blanches when she sees who it is.

‘Hey, beautiful,’ Hook wheezes.

Well, he certainly hasn’t changed. Emma gives herself a little shake and crouches down next to him. From what Archie had told them she should have expected him popping up sooner or later.

Hook keeps talking. ‘Here I didn’t think you’d…’ She touches his chest. He emits a tiny yelp of pain, ‘noticed…’ Then he screams as she presses her fingers deeper into his chest. It gives way under them.

‘Your ribs are broken,’ she informs him.

‘That must be why it hurts when I laugh,’ he says. The words make no sense to her. He’s babbling. Maybe he hit his head pretty badly, too. It’s very likely to be honest. He seems to be bleeding everywhere. ‘Did you see his face?’ he asks, sounding even more slurred than before. ‘His one true love gone in an instant!’ He’s yelling now. Not at her, he’s looking over her shoulder at something or someone.

Emma turns and sees Mr Gold lifting his head at Hook’s words and staring over at them.

‘Just like Milah, crocodile!’ Hook starts getting to his feet laboriously. Emma wonders if she should stop him, but he’s completely beside himself with anger now, really, really furious, unlike she’s ever seen before. He hadn’t been that angry with her when she left him chained up on the beanstalk, and she feels it’s too dangerous for either of them to interfere.

Mr Gold is limping towards them.

‘When you took her from me…’ Hook is only on his knees, when Mr Gold reaches him.

The older man looks down at him. ‘But you took her first,’ he says. Then he kicks hard into Hook’s face, and the pirate keels over backwards.

‘Gold, are you insane?!’ Emma screams. She has never seen anything like it, and she’d thought she’d seen it all. Kicking a man who’s just been hit by a car.

‘Yes, I am!’ Gold grinds out, kneeling down on top of Hook, places his cane across his throat, and digs it into his windpipe.

David comes from behind and tries to drag him off.

‘You can’t do that!’ he says, grunting with strain.

‘I can if you let me go,’ Gold quips, still pressing down on the cane as though he wants to press it into the ground. Hook is silent, of course, but he doesn’t move either. He’s just lying there, screwing up his face and letting it happen. His hand is on Mr Gold’s arm in a weak restraining gesture, but he doesn’t seem to exert much force.

‘You don’t want her to see that.’ Emma tries to reason with Mr Gold. _She_ doesn’t want to see that.

‘I’m a stranger to her,’ says Gold, pain in his voice now.

She’s understood that Belle lost her memory, and she’s surmised as much by now that it is all Hook’s doing. It doesn’t really come as a surprise, she just wonders how he did it, how he got past Gold.

‘Murder is a bad first impression,’ she says, feeling helpless.

‘What would Belle want you to do?’ asks David.

Before Gold has time to answer, they hear sirens approaching fast. The ambulance is here. David takes advantage of Gold’s state of distraction to pull him away from Hook. Emma straightens up and looks in the direction of the ambulance. It’s stopped, and the paramedics rush out.

‘Over here!’ calls David, gesturing towards Hook’s supine figure.

She becomes aware of the crashed car once again and looks at it. Nobody ever got out of it.

‘No! Him!’ she shouts quickly, panicking. She can see the driver now, and he’s obviously unconscious, worse off that Hook for sure. She points at the car. ‘Take care of him! He can wait!’

‘What?’ says Mary Margaret, who guides Belle to the sheriff’s car.

‘There’s someone in there,’ explains Emma hastily.

She walks towards the car and looks on as the paramedics open the door. A man is sitting behind the wheel, bent over it.

‘Do you know this guy?’ she asks the other woman.

‘Never seen him before,’ admits Mary Margaret.

‘That’s because he drove into town,’ David adds, joining them.

‘From the outside?’ asks Mary Margaret in a tremulous voice.

‘Looks like the world just came to Storybrooke,’ declares Emma, feeling oddly calm, almost cynical about it all of a sudden. As long as nobody dies tonight.

*

Emma speeds after the ambulance as fast as possible. David supresses his fatherly impulses to tell her to slow down, because he knows why she’s in a hurry to get there before Gold, because he saw what that man is willing to do to his enemy. Mary Margaret is sitting in the backseat with Belle, because there hadn’t been enough room in the ambulance, still trying unsuccessfully to calm her down. She has given up getting some information out of her; the girl is just too agitated. She keeps talking about what the man, Mr Gold, has done to her shoulder, and that she had seen him conjuring a fireball out of thin air, and it is all Mary Margaret can do to tell her it didn’t actually happen. Lying isn’t one of her strong suits, David knows, but Belle isn’t even really paying much attention to the other woman’s words.

They arrive at the hospital almost at the same time as the ambulance. The paramedics get out and pull the gurney with the stranger from the car. Another two come from inside to take Hook’s out.

The first paramedic brings the nurse, who meets them inside the hospital, up to speed, ‘Car versus pedestrian. Chest trauma from the wheel. Pedestrian has contusions, broken ribs.’

‘Go to x-ray,’ the nurse tells them. ‘Pedestrian first.’

‘Hide him!’ Emma blurts out.

‘What?’ the nurse asks confused.

Emma frantically points at Hook as he’s wheeled past her. ‘Find a room and hide him!’

‘Belle!’

David turns around. Gold has entered the hospital behind them. He’s looking at Belle who’s just being led away by another nurse. The crowd at the entrance is blocking his view of Hook, or so David hopes at least.

‘What is going on?’ Gold asks as he approaches them, shambling because of his bad leg.

‘Get him out of here!’ David shouts.

He moves to stand in his way, placing one hand against the man’s chest to hold him back.

‘What’s happening? Belle!’

‘I’d like to know that myself,’ Leroy admits from behind them.

David hasn’t even noticed he is there, everything’s so chaotic. Gold tries to push his hand away, but doesn’t manage it.

‘Belle! Belle!’ he shouts, even though he can’t possibly see her anymore.

David is inclined to feel sorry for his predicament, but he did try to strangle another man, a terribly injured man no less, and has no place in this hospital now.

‘Everybody, calm down,’ an imperious voice speaks from behind them. It’s Dr Whale. ‘Mr Gold,’ he continues, still very loudly. When he approaches the man, his voice becomes quieter. ‘Everything will be fine. She’s in good hands here.’ He puts his hand on Gold’s shoulder. ‘I promise. You will see her soon enough, after we had a good look at her.’

Then Dr Whale beckons to a nurse who leads Mr Gold up the stairs to another part of the hospital.

*

He watches her sleeping. She looks so beautiful, except maybe a bit like she’s dead. No, not dead, she _is_ breathing, thank the gods. More like she’s under a Sleeping Curse. In fact, _isn’t_ this a sort of curse she’s under? He looks around. Nobody is here, and she is asleep anyway. No harm in trying, is there?

Rumple approaches her bed slowly, looking down at her. Like this she looks just like his Belle. Not the poor confused girl from before. He’s hesitant. Something feels off about it, and he knows exactly what it is, but he can’t let his shame get in the way of having tried everything.

 _“She’s in good hands here”_ , the doctor had said, but how can Rumple believe him? Nobody trusts Rumple, and he certainly has learned it time and again, that nobody can be trusted. Nobody but Belle and Bae, the only true heroes in the world, in his world.

He bends over her, and his lips touch hers. They feel so familiar. He’s home right now. When he moves away, slowly because he doesn’t want to, he sees her eyelids flutter.

There are Belle’s eyes underneath those long sooty lashes. A smile is playing on her lips before she opens them, like she… remembers.

Then she truly opens her eyes, and her face tightens. She jolts upright and screams, like he’s tried to force himself onto her. She probably thinks he has. He doesn’t move backwards quickly enough, because of that damn leg.

‘No, no, no, no!’ he says quietly, urgently. ‘No, no, no, no!’

Two male nurses enter, and he becomes frightened that they’ll rough him up.

‘I… I’m sorry! Sorry…’

They both go straight to Belle, thankfully, and one of them puts his hand on her arm.

‘Are you okay?’

Rumple doesn’t take his eyes off her as he backs away, still whispering, ‘I’m sorry…’

Belle looks at him, really, really scared, and he hastily leaves, in his shame and his sadness, so deeply immersed in them, for a moment he even forgets who really is to blame for all this mess.

*

He’s standing in the middle of the road. He doesn’t even see the lights until they are right upon him. He’s only had eyes for the fireball in the Dark One’s hand. But now he’s hurtling through the air, his shoulder hits something hard, not hard enough to hurt, or he’s just incapable of feeling pain. He thinks he’s asleep right now, because he doesn’t feel any pain at all, and he should, he really, really should.

He opens his eyes, gasping, and then he screams, because he’s somewhere inside where he doesn’t know anything. It’s so bright, unnaturally bright, white, and it’s so cramped, and strange men are around him, and he’s tied down, and he’s in pain, in so much pain.

He tries to speak, but can’t, and he doesn’t know, maybe he didn’t even try yet.

‘It’s all right,’ one of the men is saying and puts his hand on his shoulder. At least he thinks he did, he doesn’t really feel anything but pain. His vision is blurry. The walls are vibrating, and there’s a rattling noise in his pounding head. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

‘K… Killian… Killian J… Jones,’ he replies, gulping hard. His lips, his body, everything is trembling. Where’s Liam?

No, wait. Liam’s dead. And he isn’t really Killian Jones anymore, is he? He’s just a one-handed pirate. He’s Hook, but he doesn’t tell the man that. He’s in Emma’s world now, where he doesn’t belong.

What’s happened? Maybe he’s dead now, too, because he’s not hurting anymore. He should feel pain. Swan’s said his ribs were broken, and he’s sure they are.

It’s so bright here. Light. Bright light. Two angry beast’s eyes, glowing in the dark, rushing towards him, and the beast mows him down, like he’s not even there.

He screams again. And then everything’s black.

_‘Hide him!’_

_‘What?’_

_‘Find a room and hide him!’_

Swan, Killian thinks. But he’s imagining things. She’s not here. She was never here. He doesn’t open his eyes. It’s too bright, and he’s scared. There are too many voices, so much commotion, and the pain in his chest is back, because he isn’t dead.

Not yet.

There’s something soft underneath him, and around him. Maybe he’s in a bed. He hasn’t been in a proper bed for bloody ages. If he sleeps, it’s in a bunk bed on the Jolly Roger. Before that he used to live in the captain’s quarters; Liam’s room, which is his now and has the best bed on the ship. More often than not, he slept out in the open on the ground. More often than not, not at all.

Something big comes towards him, rushing up to him, and he’s too slow to move out of its way. Then he really moves, and there’s a pain in his chest, distant as though merely a memory, but still undeniably there. He doesn’t actually scream, not from his fear, nor from the pain, he just sort of whimpers pathetically.

When he opens his eyes, he’s looking at the most beautiful woman in the world. He’s glad he didn’t scream, for what would she have thought of him?

*

They tell her his ribs are broken and he’s strained a few muscles and ligaments in his leg. For a moment, she isn’t even sure who they’re talking about; they call him Mr Jones. He’s going to be all right, of course, and why should she even worry? He’s had it coming anyway. She’s just glad Mr Gold didn’t manage to kill him, or, in fact, the car.

His larynx is badly bruised, too, but Dr Whale knows already, that wasn’t from the crash. Nobody is prosecuting Gold for the assault though. They put his near throttling of Hook down to emotional distress, which is just right, and anyway what would be the point of arresting him? He could magic himself right out of the jail cell.

She’s sitting at the edge of Hook’s bed now, watching him sleep. He’s out of his black leather getup, wearing a white bathrobe and a blue hospital gown. He looks almost normal and also a bit younger. She wonders how old he is.

After a while his breathing becomes less even. Then he screws up his face, maybe in pain, because he moans almost soundlessly. She struggles a bit to keep her face blank. He doesn’t deserve her pity.

With a grunt he fully awakens, looks around, and his eyes find hers. He stops moving.

‘Where’s Cora?’ she asks.

‘What?’ he says in a hoarse voice and moves his right arm. He’s brought up short a second later and looks down. She’s handcuffed him to the bed frame. He sighs deeply and smirks. His left eyebrow quirks. ‘Again? You’re really into this, aren’t you?’

Emma smiles humourlessly down at him. He rotates his torso, but stops mid-movement and hisses in pain.

‘Damn that hurts,’ he whispers and smiles in a self-deprecating way.

‘Told you,’ she says deadpan and gets up. She walks closer to his head and manages to keep her expression neutral, not to show resentment or, worse, concern, ‘cracked a few ribs. Where’s Cora?’

‘You look good, I must say,’ he says, less pleasantly now, too. ‘All “Where’s Cora?” in a commanding voice. Chills.’

He’s not as good at flirting as he thinks he is, or maybe he would call that courting. But she also feels like his heart isn’t quite in it, not the way it’d been in the Enchanted Forest. Maybe the effect of his charm has also worn off since then because of what she knows he’s done. She’s disenchanted.

‘You have all sorts of sore places. I can make you hurt.’

When he smiles at her, like he doesn’t believe she would, she moves forward, jabbing her fingers into his side. He winces and groans. Then he looks up at her, all humour gone. He doesn’t return her smile this time.

‘I’ve no idea where Cora is. She’s her own agenda,’ he volunteers surprisingly quickly. ‘Let’s talk about something I _am_ interested in; my hook.’ He raises his stump. ‘May I have it back?’ He smiles deviously. ‘Or is there another attachment you’d prefer?’

‘You’re awfully chipper for a guy who just failed to kill his enemy… then got hit by a car.’

Talk about bad luck, she thinks to herself.

‘Well, my ribs may be broken, but,’ he looks down at himself, ‘everything else is still intact.’ She wonders if she should tell him about his leg, so he gets thrown off the subject he’s really trying to talk about. 'Which is more than can be said for all the other bad days I’ve had.’ He looks at his left arm now. Emma nearly asks if there were worse days than when he lost his hand, but she won’t be rising to the bait. He groans as he allows his head to sink back into the pillow. ‘Plus, I did some quality damage to my foe.’

Whether or not he wanted to induce her sympathy or something else with his hints about his past, his last words lost him both possibilities indefinitely.

‘You hurt Belle,’ she says, not quite angry yet, but simmering.

‘I hurt his heart,’ he says promptly. ‘Belle’s just where he keeps it. He killed my love. I know the feeling.’

He gives her a mocking smile. She knows he’s not even aware that what he says is morally questionable at best. It’s not like she’s not sorry that Mr Gold killed his lover. That doesn’t exonerate him from his actions in her book though, especially since he shows absolutely no remorse about them. When he gets better, he needs to go to jail. He has to answer for his crimes.

She leans towards his face and smirks.

‘Keep smiling buddy,’ she says, and Hook stares up at her and gulps. ‘You’re chained down. He’s on his feet, immortal, has magic, and you hurt his girl.’ His face is an unreadable mask. But that’s exactly the thing, isn’t it? She puts on masks, too, to hide her feelings. In his case, the prevalent feeling is fear. He thinks he can hide it, but not from her. Not anymore. He doesn’t want to die. ‘If I were to pick dead guy of the year?’ She feels unsolicited sadness inside her now, and her voice sounds flat when she says, ‘I’d pick you.’

Hook actually looks a bit stricken. Then he twists his face into a sneer. Emma smiles back, but she can’t suppress the sadness inside her, because she can’t protect him. She hates it that she wishes she could.

*

She leaves Hook to ponder on his misdeeds if he is inclined to do so to find her parents, the grumpy dwarf Leroy, and Ruby gathered around in the lobby. From what she overhears they consider hacking into the stranger’s phone to find out more about him.

‘Well, you do understand that computer-hacking and pickaxe-hacking are different?’ Leroy is saying to David.

‘Here,’ she says, stepping forward. ‘Let me try. I have a thing.’ She produces the dongle, which hangs on her key chain, from her pocket and fits it into the according slot on the phone. ‘And we do know something. There was stuff in his car – rental agreement, maps, receipts. His name is Greg Mendell. Now let’s see…’ The software in the dongle reads out the code to unlock the phone and enters it automatically. Mary Margaret and Ruby lean in closer to look over her shoulder. The first thing on the phone are recent phone calls. She changes to pictures. There are a couple of selfies. ‘Pictures of him alone at a bunch of Eastern Seaboard tourist locations…’ Emma mutters more to herself than to the other four, who can see it for themselves. ‘A LinkedIn account… and he tweets pictures of his food.

‘I’ll keep looking,’ she says, ‘but I think what we have here is just a well-documented, real-life, ordinary Joe…’ She pulls the dongle from the phone. ‘Or Greg,’ she adds shrugging.

‘So,’ Ruby chimes in, her voice sounding on the verge of hysteria, ‘whatever’s kept random people from stumbling into Storybrooke for the last twenty-eight years…’

‘It’s gone,’ Mary Margaret finishes the sentence for her.

‘Anyone could drive in,’ David says quietly. Then he looks up at them. ‘Why are my instincts telling me that’s a bad thing?’

‘’cause you’ve seen E.T. or Splash or any other movie where they find something magical and study it to death,’ says Leroy. He looks at Ruby. ‘Think what they’d do to a werewolf?’

Ruby gives him an accusatory look. Emma still has to wrap her head around the fact that she is both Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.

‘Oh, and his friends and family?’ says Mary Margaret. ‘They’re gonna come looking for him soon.’

‘Let’s not try to overreact,’ suggests Emma.

‘Leroy’s right. We don’t need outsiders here,’ says David.

‘Hook says he doesn’t know where Cora is, and God knows what she’s gonna do. With other people coming here, that’s not gonna be good for anyone.’

‘We need to find Regina, tell her we know she was framed,’ says Mary Margaret.

‘I’ve been tracking her,’ says Ruby, ‘but no luck. She’s gone underground.’

‘But what if Cora finds her first? I don’t wanna think about the damage those two could do together. This could _not_ have come at a worse time!’ exclaims Mary Margaret in one breath, clearly not taking Emma’s advice of not overreacting.

‘It’s okay,’ Emma says to her, trying to get her to calm down again. ‘The guy’s being patched up right now. He’ll probably be on his way home by morning.’

‘Not quite,’ speaks someone from behind them. Dr Whale continues his streak of today, cropping up unexpectedly and a little creepily. ‘He’s bleeding into his chest cavity. It’s not a full flood, you know. But pretty soon he’ll be drowning in his own blood.’

‘So make it stop!’ demands Emma, not quite believing she has to say the words. ‘Aren’t you a doctor?’ She feels a little dread, like what if he’s _not_? Are any of the so-called professionals in Storybrooke actually nothing more than fakes? No, that couldn’t be true, could it?

Whale just sort of splutters, then he looks past them at something and swiftly walks over to the staircase. Mr Gold is just coming down.

‘Gold,’ Whale says to him quietly, but still loudly enough so the others can hear him. ‘You fixed me. Now fix him. Please. It will take you seconds and cost you nothing.’

Gold looks as though he considers the matter.

‘No,’ he says after a little while.

‘No?’ Whale repeats much louder now, and spreads his arms in a helpless gesture, though he seems more frustrated than resigned. ‘Just… no?’

Gold has turned to leave, but the doctor’s words seems to have stirred something in him after all.

‘I owe you nothing, Whale!’ he says almost viciously, swinging around. Then he gestures around the watching group, who now move to gather around Whale. ‘I owe none of you anything.’ He spots Emma, who’s at the front. ‘And some of you owe me.’ His eyes are fixed on her. She’s forgotten how eerie they can look; like a reptile, even though they’re brown. ‘So, yeah… just no. Oh, and point of interest? The driver; he saw me throwing some magic. So, instead of trying to get him outta here, you better be hoping he dies.’ His words sound serpentine now, too, sibilant. Emma suppresses a shudder. She really wishes she wouldn’t owe him. ‘Because if he doesn’t, he’s gonna be driving tour buses up and down Main Street.’ Emma rolls her eyes. Maybe he’s right, but that he’s got ideas like that, still show how weirdly predictable he is in his depravity. ‘So glad I don’t give a damn.’ He looks around the group, coldness in his eyes, then finally turns to leave.

Whale looks after him, seeming a little flustered, as he scratches his ear and then puts his hand over his mouth. At length, he turns around to face them.

‘Look,’ he whispers again. ‘Letting him die is easy… I can do that, if that’s what you decide.’

Emma stares at him, then at the others. Is anyone else even _considering_ it?

‘Let’s take this somewhere private,’ she whispers now, too.

*

Everyone follows Whale into a secluded room near a corridor leading the lobby.

‘It’s not really murder if we let him succumb to his injuries,’ he offers quietly, holding the door open as everyone walks past him into the room.

‘I’m pretty sure it is,’ says Emma in that dry sarcastic way of hers.

‘Of course we save him!’ cries Mary Margaret with a passion.

David follows her and adds, ‘Obviously.’

‘Well…’ That’s Leroy.

The other three turn around to him, looking appalled, especially Mary Margaret.

‘Leroy!’

‘We gotta think it through,’ he says, no less avidly than her. ‘We save him and kill the whole town, is that really better?’

Mary Margaret opens her mouth to retort something, but seems unable to find an argument against his words. They haven’t had so many obvious dilemmas in their lives back in the Enchanted Forest, David realises. Here in the world without magic things are more complicated, less black and white. Prince Charming was always righteous, always knew what to do, but David Nolan alone was insecure and a coward, and maybe he even had a small point. Doing the right thing isn’t exactly hard, but deciding what it is.

‘So we have to choose between our lives and his,’ concludes Ruby, the last to have entered the room before Whale closed the door.

‘We can worry about the town later,’ says David.

‘Which doesn’t mean we should abandon it,’ Mary Margaret says, staring at him, as though he had offered to leave the town behind, which they couldn’t even if that was what he had meant.

‘I know,’ he says, ‘but let’s worry about Storybrooke after we’ve saved a life.’ Mary Margaret seems to consider the matter for a second, then nods. David turns to the Whale. ‘Doctor Whale prepare for surgery.’

The doctor appears to come out of some reverie, nods, and leaves the room. It is interesting to see that he follows the order of a prince that isn’t even his. He had been very adamant about that before after all, when David stopped him from attacking Regina.

Mary Margaret expectantly looks around the remaining people in the room.

‘Anyone else notice he’s drunk off his ass?’ she asks.

Before David can admit out loud he hasn’t, the phone in Emma’s hand starts ringing. The triumphant theme of a familiar science fiction film blares through the tiny room. For a moment he doesn’t realise it isn’t her phone and wonders why she isn’t answering. But of course it isn’t. Everyone else stares at it, too, as though it sounds the seven trumpets.

‘Someone is looking for Greg,’ Emma states. ‘How long before they come here?’

 

**2**

He is almost at his wit’s end, but there is still one more thing he can think of to do. And after that he will think of another, and then another, until it works. Or alternatively, he can try and find out how to get his hands on the pirate and wring his scrawny neck.

Rumple takes the chipped cup out of the showcase and looks at it, thinking. It has a certain kind of similarity in meaning to Smee’s hat or Bae’s shawl, but how to reverse the effects the potion was only supposed to ward off?

A sound at the door makes him look up, shakes him from his contemplation. Someone is outside the shop. Rumple puts the cup back, picks up his cane, and walks over there. Even if it is his adversary, he is sure he will have no problem dealing with him. Who is Hook really against him? A mere bug, waiting to be squashed. Nobody is his equal here, and after tonight they are even less welcome than before. He will chase away anyone who comes calling or kill them, depending on who they are. It is also late and all the other shops are most certainly closed, not just his own. So, it’s only fair he will be left undisturbed as well.

He peers through the blinds, expecting someone to be standing outside, but the street is deserted, no pirate or saviour or princess or prince here to bother him. Well, he supposes since Hook has been hit by a car, even he would not be able to be out and about so soon.

Satisfied that is was just his imagination or a stray, he turns back around to face the shop, then pauses. A big wooden box is standing up on the counter, which certainly hasn’t been here before. It looks like a case where you might put an old-fashioned typewriter in, like the one that blasted Booth, better known as Pinocchio, used to have.

He starts walking towards it and is almost there, when a voice speaks from behind him, near the door.

‘Hello, Rumple,’ it says.

Rumple turns to see Cora standing there in a blue dress, much more splendidly garbed than he has ever seen her before. It has been such a long time. She’s older than him now. No, she’s not really, but she looks it. How old would she be now? Well over fifty? Or more like sixty? He composes himself quickly. She might not even have realised how much she startled him.

‘Well, I expected this was just a matter of time…’ he begins slowly. ‘ _Had_ hoped you were dead, but hey… Disappointment’s just part of life. I’m sure we can agree on that.’

Cora’s expression doesn’t change despite the insult. She growls a little, playfully. Rumple notices she’s standing closer to him now, though for the life of him he could not tell when she moved.

‘Aw, the crocodile snaps at the little bird,’ she says, smiling. ‘And after I brought you a gift.’ She gestures towards the box.

‘Yeah, did you bring the antidote, too?’ he asks snidely.

‘Oh, Rumple.’ She chuckles, deep inside her throat. ‘It’s a peace offering.’

‘And what do you want,’ he asks without missing a beat, for this, uh…’ He looks at the box, itching to lift the lid, but he cannot show her how much he wants to know what’s inside it. ‘This peace offering?’

She knows about deals almost as much as he does, and she would never ever do something without securing some sort of benefit for herself. That is just who Cora is. Always looking out for her own wellbeing and even if that means abandoning her child.

Cora looks serious now. ‘My daughter,’ she says, for once without any hint of amusement. Maybe she has similar priorities to his own after all. ‘You were so clever to get her to lay the curse so you could come here. You don’t need her anymore.’

And even just by watching from a distance, even if she wasn’t in on the plan, Cora has seen through it first, before anyone else, because she understands him like nobody else ever did. Not Milah, maybe not even Belle.

‘You don’t need her anymore,’ Cora continues. ‘Let me try to get her back. And let us live.’

Rumple twists his face into a smile. He might be moved by her words, but he can still not forget what she had done to him. And if she wants something from him, she should definitely pay him back in kind. For example with the pirate’s head on a platter. He knows that she knows Hook well enough, though he doesn’t exactly want to know how well. Though no matter how deep her affections for the pretty boy run, she would not risk her own happiness for a worthless cur like him, so she might be willing to exchange. Maybe the pirate’s head or, even better, his heart is in the box. He chuckles lightly at the thought, because that would never happen, that would be too good to be true.

‘And what do I get for my troubles?’

‘Your son,’ answers Cora promptly.

Well, talk about too good to be true. How would Cora know how to find Bae, when even he…?

She looks pointedly at the box, and Rumple turns around to it once more. He lifts the lid off it. Inside there is a pale globe, rather like a huge milky crystal ball, with a sharp pointy end at the top, looking more like a needle, the ones with which you can inject the Sleeping Curse, like the one David Nolan used on himself to speak with Snow White in the Netherworld.

‘You know what that is, of course,’ says Cora from behind him.

Rumple is transfixed by the sight of the globe.

‘It’ll find him,’ he whispered, almost to himself. Then as though he becomes aware of the other person in the room again, he turns and speaks in his normal voice. ‘If this one truly is _it_.’

‘Aw, darling,’ says Cora and laughs. She moves towards him, ‘I have _no_ reason to cheat you.’

‘Anymore,’ he adds quickly. His voice sounds almost worried, fretful like a rabbit. Rumple finds himself backing away from her, as though afraid of her proximity. Maybe he is. There is a power she holds over him that no one else has.

‘I want you,’ she sighs, ‘to find the one person in this universe who might still love you.’

Rumple looks away, when he feels tears welling up. It is hard to admit that once again, he is completely alone in the world. And what if his quest fails? And what if Bae hates him so much that he will never forgive him? _What_ if Belle never returns to being his Belle?

‘After all I’m doing the same thing.’

‘Do you have any spells to return memories?’ asks Rumple, still not trusting himself to look back at her, but at least his voice sounds quite normal.

He looks up, gulps, and smiles a little. Cora’s look of genuine pity does not enrage him like it would on others, because maybe she is the only one who knows nearly the exact same pain he’s going through.

‘I only know what you taught me… master.’ Her eyes light up and she looks so young all of a sudden. Like the radiant woman he met so long ago, the one who hadn’t just bitterness in her heart, but also passion and a strange kind of innocence, not the innocence of Snow White and Prince Charming, but a more rugged one, more like him.

‘So,’ she continues, as Rumple doesn’t say anything, because his heart is breaking all over again, ‘will you accept my offer of a truce?’

For a moment, Rumple is sorely tempted to ask her to get Hook for him, so he might cut off his other hand, rip out his heart, and show it to him, before he crushed it to dust. He would do that for everyone to see, especially in front of Miss Swan, so that no one, no one would ever dare to lay a hand on what is his again. But he thinks that the globe is more valuable, because that will find Bae for him. He can and will find another way to bring back Belle’s memories. And Hook is so single-minded, he isn’t going anywhere. Rumple can still take him out after everything else is done.

He lifts up his hand as though about to touch the globe, then offers it to Cora instead.

‘Truce.’

She takes it, smiles again, and looks as though she can barely contain a giggle.

‘Let’s seal it like we used to,’ she whispers.

Rumple doesn’t understand. Or he does. Cora moves towards him, and he knows now, but he doesn’t move away, and as her lips touch his, he returns the kiss.

*

The phone flashes silently as another call comes in. Emma has turned the sound off after the ringtone had gotten on her nerves. Everyone around her is looking at the phone, too.

‘The same person again,’ says Leroy.

Emma reads the caller ID. ‘“Her”,’ she says dismissively. ‘Cute.’ Must be one hell of a woman.

‘Probably a girlfriend,’ guesses David.

‘We could answer it,’ suggests Mary Margaret. ‘Just let her know he’s okay.’

‘He’s _not_ okay,’ Emma contradicts.

‘He’s alive,’ says Ruby. ‘We could let her know he’s alive.’

‘Nah,’ says David. ‘The police could trace it here instantly.’

‘She can activate the find-your-phone-thing without us picking it up at all,’ returns Emma. The only possibility is that Storybrooke is still untraceable because of some residue magic. Is she seriously starting to think along those lines? Guess that’s what hanging out in Storybrooke does to you.

She looks at the phone. The flashing has stopped. A message _“Missed call from Her”_ appears on the display now. Everyone looks at it when they notice, too.

‘That settles that,’ says Leroy, sounding a bit relieved.

‘Oh!’ groans Mary Margaret, staring up at the ceiling. ‘My nerves can’t take this. Is the surgery almost over?’

‘Uh, I think it takes…’ Emma begins when she sees a male nurse enter the lobby, look around as though searching for someone, and then turn to leave again.

The others follow her gaze, and David who’s closest springs into action.

‘W… whoa, wait!’ he calls after the man. ‘Wait.’ The man stops and turns around. ‘Any news?’

‘No,’ the man replies. ‘I was just looking for the doctor.’

‘He’s not in the OR?’ says Ruby.

The nurse shakes his head. ‘He never came in.’

‘Then page him!’ Emma tells him fiercely.

The nurse turns to the phone mounted at the wall next to the lobby to call the doctor.

‘He was not looking so good earlier,’ David concedes in a low voice.

The nurse lets the phone ring, and then they all hear a tiny beeping sound. It sounds very close.

Mary Margaret looks in the direction of the noise. ‘He’s here!’

Everyone else is turning the same way. There are a few laundry baskets and the sound comes from one of them. Emma goes there and rummages around in the one where the beeping is loudest. She pulls out the doctor’s coat and finds the pager in one of the pockets.

‘No,’ she says staring at it. ‘But his pager is. He’s gone.’

She thinks for how long had they been waiting? Since when is the doctor gone? Is Greg even alive?

Ruby steps forward and takes the coat.

‘No, that’s good,’ she says when she sees the desperate look on Emma’s face. ‘I can track him now.’

She sniffs at the coat and starts walking. The others follow her.

‘Got the scent?’ David asks her.

‘Boozy,’ she admits. Her voice sounds nasal, as though the smell isn’t exactly to her liking.

‘Just find him and bring him back,’ says Emma, who’s walking behind the others. She feels calmer now they at least have a chance of getting out of this whole disaster. ‘We’ll watch Hook and figure out options if Whale doesn’t come back.’

‘Maybe Doc can do it,’ Mary Margaret suggests hopefully.

Leroy bursts out laughing as though this is the joke of the century. ‘Surgery?’ He pats Mary Margaret on the shoulder. When she doesn’t smile and neither does David he seems to catch on she was being serious. His grin falters, and he shakes his head vehemently. ‘No!’

Emma remembers her doubts about Whale being an actual doctor. What if he really isn’t? What if that’s the reason he split? Didn’t he ask Gold to fix Greg for him? He had seemed like a reasonably sound doctor while he was cursed though.

‘Maybe he didn’t even run,’ Mary Margaret continues babbling, sounding worried but also a bit naïve. ‘Maybe Cora grabbed him for some reason.’

‘I don’t think so,’ says David. ‘He’s been in a rough place since he brought Regina’s fiancé back to life.’

‘Daniel?’ Mary Margaret asks, looking confused and completely missing the bigger issue.

‘Back to life?!’ repeats Emma.

‘And had his arm ripped off and put back on.’

‘Cool,’ Leroy admits, not the least bit concerned about the relevance of that information.

‘Wait,’ says Mary Margaret. ‘Daniel came back?’

‘Like some sort of Frankenstein?’ asks Emma, trying not to freak out.

‘That’s Whale,’ says David almost flippantly. ‘The doctor. And Daniel was his…’

‘What went on here while we were gone?’ Mary Margaret interrupts him.

Emma would like to know that herself, but there are more important things going on right now. David sighs deeply and shakes his head as though he doesn’t know where to begin.

‘Ruby,’ says Emma to the other woman, who has been waiting patiently, watching the exchange, ‘get going. Bring back Doctor Frankenstein.’ Ruby nods and heads off. ‘We’ll send this guy home with _bolts_ in his neck,’ Emma mumbles to herself. She can’t shake the image of poor Greg Mendell with greenish skin, an unnaturally high square forehead, and stitched scars all over.

‘She’ll find him,’ Mary Margaret says reassuringly.

‘Yeah, but what kind of state is he gonna be in?’ asks Emma. It doesn’t even matter that Whale _is_ Doctor Frankenstein or if he is the world’s greatest physician. What if he’s as drunk as his coat smells?

*

He waits until things have calmed down a little outside, before he tries his best on the manacles again. It is not a type he knows from back home, but there isn’t many restraints he hasn’t managed to wriggle himself out of. When he moves his arm again, his chest responds with a burning pain, but there is also another smaller jabbing one in the crook of his arm. He carefully drags up the sleeve of the thick white coat he’s wearing. A needle is embedded deeply into his flesh, connected to hollow transparent strings with fluids running inside them.

Killian leans forward and manages to pull it out with his teeth. It’s much longer than he anticipated. He grunts in pain as the needle leaves his skin. But now at least, manipulating the lock will be child’s play. There’s also a clamping device over his forefinger. The pressure of it isn’t high and he gets it off without much effort. The strings running from a beeping machine through the neck of his shirt unto his chest are linked to some kind of pads onto his chest. He rips them off impatiently and feels some hairs parting company with his body in a highly unpleasant way. The people in this world really have the most peculiar ideas about torture.

Once he’s free, he gingerly gets up. Pain shoots up from his left leg. Another injury he hadn’t been aware of. Never mind though, he’s had worse, even if it means he has to hobble around like the Dark One. He considers searching for his clothes, but he feels there is no time. How long before someone notices he’s gone? Does he want to risk getting caught again? It’s not like he’s got a bright outlook on the future when he remains here. Neither Swan nor Gold, if he finds him, will be gentle with him. Of course, there isn’t a question as to who would be the lesser evil, but given the choice he will choose neither one right now. He’s really vulnerable with his injuries and without his hook. With her he mucked it up, just as he expected he would, and he isn’t sure there is any coming back from that.

But when he comes face to face with the Dark One once more, which he will as long as he has any say in it, then he prefers to do it standing up. Plus, every time he closes his eyes he sees the two lights coming towards him. If he remains here in the bed, he will probably fall sleep again, and nightmare are things little children suffer from, not grown men.

Suddenly there’s a sound at the door. He stands there, almost frozen on the spot. Has the Dark One already found him? He isn’t ready. Then again, has he ever been?

The door opens and a woman in some sort of uniform enters. Killian smiles at her and hides his arms behind his back. No need to frighten the lass with his manacled wrist and his ugly stump.

She stops as she sees him standing there.

‘Hullo, luv,’ he says.

She looks over her shoulder as though looking for help. There is a tray with food and drink on her arms.

‘Are you supposed to be up, sir?’ she asks in a slightly quivering voice after she turns back around.

Killian’s smile broadens.

‘There’s no need for such formalities, ma’am, I am but a simple pirate. Captain Hook, at your service.’ He tries to bow, but forgot about his broken ribs again, so the movement is cut a little short, ending in a wince.

It seems the lady doesn’t notice that, but she most certainly has heard of Captain Hook, for she starts backwards almost into the door. Killian doesn’t feel like scaring her away, especially since she appears to carry some kind of sustenance. Usually he doesn’t like interrupting his quest for trivial things like food or sleep, but even he has to admit that now and then he needs to replenish his strength.

‘I mean you no harm, ma’am,’ he says. ‘Just leave the tray here before you go, and I swear upon my honour, I shall not pursue you.’

He wonders for a brief moment, if she knows what his honour is actually worth these days, but pushes the thought aside. It’s not the end of the world if he does not get the things on the tray, and since he’s injured he would not be able to attack her whether he wanted to or not. It seems like his word means even less than his honour. When the crocodile is dead, reasons Killian, he can return to being the kind of man he wants to be.

Visibly shaking, she puts the tray down on a little table beside the door and scurries from the room before Killian can thank her. He sighs and limps over to the tray, hoping to maybe even find some libations on there. What he sees however, takes his mind entirely off his quest for food and drink, or the crocodile.

*

The doctor’s scent takes her to the docks. During the curse she never would have been able to guess it was her sense of smell that appeared to give her the intuition where to look for stuff. She had thought she’d simply been lucky when she found Kathryn’s heart back when she was still cursed. But she had smelled something there. Probably blood. She shudders.

There’s a lingering smell on Dr Whale, not just the booze. The blood that hangs in the hospital air, sweat, death. Ruby sees him. Not really yet, but the smell is so strong it paints a picture in her head. The figure is standing at the furthest edge of the pier. A very long way away. It looks as if the man wants to… Something splashes up ahead. He has thrown something into the water.

‘Doctor Whale?’ she calls, even though she knows it’s him. She wants to alert him to her presence.

He turns around. ‘Don’t come near me,’ he calls and takes a step forward.

Ruby rushes towards him with her superhuman speed and grabs him, just before he plunges into the icy depths. She pulls him up.

‘Are you insane?’ she cries, as he sits there shivering beside her. She feels cold, too. It’s not just the weather. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘I can’t go on,’ he wails. ‘It’s all my fault, my fault.’

‘What’s your fault?’ she asks. There isn’t really that much time, but before she can make him calm down, there’s no use pushing him for the OR.

Dr Whale takes a deep breath and sits down more comfortably. He doesn’t look at her, but instead at the clenched hands in his lap. They still tremble a little.

‘Back home where I come from…’

‘You’re not from the Enchanted Forest?’ interrupts him Ruby before she can stop herself.

‘No, I come from a land without colour. I didn’t know what that means before Rumplestiltskin came to visit me at my laboratory. He was so bright, so colourful, and the money he gave me was fat and yellow.

'I tried to _make_ life, you know? I tried to return my brother to the living, when it was my fault he died in the first place.

‘I was digging up a fresh grave to find another specimen for my experiments, but he tried to stop me. Guards came to the cemetery and fired at us. Gerhardt, my brother, he… he got shot and died. I tried to bring him back to life and I succeeded somewhat. But my father said he was a monster, because he couldn’t speak, and my brother…’ He gives a long shuddering breath. ‘He beat our father to death.

'I think he’s still back there, sort of alive, because I couldn’t bring myself to put him down…’ He buries his face in his hand for a moment, then looks up back at the sea.

His voice sounds calmer as he goes on, ‘I wanted my name to stand for life. But everybody just thinks it’s the name of a monster.’ He gives a little chuckle, a self-deprecating sound. ‘I guess they’re right about that. Rumplestiltskin says that magic has a price.’ He looks over at her, though something in her eyes appears to make him look away again. ‘But from where I’m sitting seems science does, too… Every time I try to save a life, someone else dies.’

‘Hey,’ she says loudly. ‘Yeah. Look.’ Finally he turns his attention away from the sea towards her. ‘You’re Frankenstein.’ She looks at him intently so he can see she’s fine with it, and he should be, too. ‘And I’m the werewolf.’ She braces herself to say the next words. There aren’t many people who know the story, no more than Granny and Snow White, but she feels she can tell him, if only to make him feel a little better about himself, just for now. ‘I _ate_ my boyfriend.’ He frowns at her, but not like he’s revolted by her. More like he finds it curious, maybe interesting. She sighs. At least he didn’t make her feel bad about herself. It’s her turn to look over at the black sea stretching before them. ‘Regina thought she was punishing us by erasing who we were, but I think she underestimated how much crap we wanted to forget.’

He sighs and laughs again. ‘Yeah.’

‘But,’ continues Ruby, not letting off and looking at him again, ‘we can’t let it stop us. She gave us a chance to start over, and I wanna take it. I think you should, too.’

Whale looks down at his hands again, looking deflated. ‘I wasn’t such a bad guy, you know. I wanted to bring life back. He never got over our mother. If I could’ve just brought her back…’

Ruby thinks he’s had enough wallowing in self-pity.

‘That guy in the hospital. Someone keeps calling for him. Maybe a wife? A mother? Maybe there’s still some stuff you _can_ fix?’

*

They had been waiting for about half an hour until Ruby came back with the doctor in tow. He acted like nothing had happened and went straight for the OR.

Now they are hanging around in the waiting area for any kind of news. David, Ruby and Leroy are sitting in the chairs, talking quietly, but Emma doesn’t really listen. She is still too agitated.

‘So, your father said something interesting the other day,’ Mary Margaret says to her, standing next to her with her coffee cup in hand, waiting while Emma takes one for herself from the vending machine.

Emma is thrown for a moment. ‘My fa…?’ She looks over at the other three and sees David there. Her… father… ‘David,’ she says. She’s not gonna tell Mary Margaret that she sort of had the image of a man at least fifty years old in her head, maybe one of her former foster fathers? One of the fatherly ones… Let’s not go there. ‘Yeah.’

Mary Margaret takes a deep breath. She has a look on her face as though she knows exactly what Emma has been thinking, but doesn’t want to dwell on it either. They sure are family. ‘If he and I went back… there,’ she begins hesitantly, ‘w… would you come with us?’

Emma feels like the floor is breaking off beneath her feet. ‘Go back to the Enchanted Forest ghost town?’ she asks just to be very sure they’re talking about the same thing. ‘I can’t… I mean I can’t…’ she begins, stumbling, and then she is saved by the most unlikely knight in shining armour interrupting her.

‘What’s this?’ a man says from across the other side of the room. Hook is limping towards the waiting area a plate with a jiggly blue substance in his hand. He lifts the plate up to his eyes and squints at it with distaste. ‘I found it on a tray.’ He doesn’t have drip like other patients in a hospital would have, but other than that…

‘Really?’ she calls to him, when she realises he must have broken free.

He lifts up his arm even higher, so she can see the open half of the handcuff. ‘Pirate,’ he says by way of explanation. ‘Now what the bloody hell is this?’

‘Jell-O!’ says Emma, glaring at him.

‘It’s food. You eat it,’ Mary Margaret adds from behind her, sounding just as pissed off.

Hook raises one eyebrow. His expression of disgust doesn’t waver. It would almost be comical if she weren’t so furious with him.

‘And I thought it was a hallucination.’

His attention is caught by Ruby who’s laughing silently at the situation. Maybe even at him or his joke?

‘Oh, hello,’ he says in a purring voice. His whole demeanour changes to something Emma has learned to know quite well. His eyes move from Ruby’s feet up to her pretty face. ‘You’re quite real, aren’t you?’ Ruby rolls her eyes at him.

‘Go!’ Emma grabs his shoulder and turns him roughly around. He groans in pain. ‘Eat… your Jell-O!’

She marches him back to his room. Behind her she can hear Leroy complaining like a little boy, ‘Guys! It’s been like hours! How long is it’s supposed to take? What’s Whale doing?’

Emma practically hauls Hook through the hall, and it seems it is all he can do to keep up with her, hobbling.

‘Easy, easy there, Swan!’ he says, trying and failing to sound casual. ‘You’re handling a wounded man here.’

‘Maybe you should have thought about that before you shot Belle.’

‘Well,’ he says slowly, ‘it’s not like I tried to kill her… or did. And for all it’s worth, she seems to be better off than me in the long run.’

Emma snorts derisively. ‘Your injuries will heal. Her memories are lost forever.’

‘Better than being dead,’ he says quietly, and Emma finds herself wondering if he refers to himself or to that Milah.

‘How could you even have been sure you wouldn’t kill her instead? Doctor Whale told me you were wasted.’

‘Wasted?’

‘Very drunk,’ she clarifies.

He shrugs. ‘I’m nearly always drunk.’ She huffs. ‘But that doesn’t matter. I’ve got decades of practise ahead of you. I can shoot the eye out of a gull in flight if I have to.’

Emma fights the urge to punch him on the nose. He is still a patient and in her custody.

‘You should have run while you had the chance. Nobody noticed you were gone,’ she informs him of his own stupidity. That means, of course, she admits that she’s messed up by not having him watched more closely. A mistake she will not repeat. She will cuff his legs to the bed as well if that is what it takes.

‘Oh, worry not, Swan,’ he says dramatically. ‘In due course I shall escape, like I escaped from that beanstalk.’

‘You didn’t escape. You were set free,’ she scoffs. ‘How did you get my handcuffs open?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ He chuckles. ‘But… a professional never reveals his secrets.’

She stops and pulls him over to face her. ‘Look, it’s not like I can’t figure it out eventually. I can pick locks, too, you know.’ Hook’s lips curl into a smirk. She can tell what he’s thinking. Seems she’s not the only one who’s an open book now. ‘And I got out of the dungeon when even Rumplestiltskin didn’t manage it.’ She neglects to mention that Rumplestiltskin could have if he had wanted to. ‘Maybe I’ll tell you how.’

His smile widens and his eyes sparkle. ‘No need. I already know.’

‘Oh, really?’

He leans forward so their faces are a bit more on a level, and it doesn’t even occur to her to back away. ‘I told you before, Swan. You’re bloody brilliant.’

Emma feels a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, but she doesn’t let it show.

‘You could’ve fled right now, Hook. Why didn’t you?’

He looks her up and down. She thinks she sees a red tinge on his cheekbones. Then he abruptly turns away and limps back to his room with her trailing behind, wondering what just happened. Hook usually doesn’t pass up a chance to come up with a witty or snappy retort.

 

**3**

They hear laughter in the corridor. Emma, David, Mary Margaret, and Leroy walk towards the sound to meet Ruby and Dr Whale practically arm in arm. The looks on their happy smiling faces already says it all.

‘He’s going to make it?’ asks David.

‘He’s got some recuperating ahead of him,’ Dr Whale answers, crossing his arms across his chest, but other than that looks way more relaxed than he has all night. ‘A few weeks, maybe, but yes. He’s going to live.’ David claps him on the shoulder.

‘Thank goodness,’ says Mary Margaret.

‘Or me,’ Whale replies with an impish smile.

‘Telling you right now,’ says Leroy glumly from behind, ‘this will come to no good.’

‘Quiet, Leroy,’ David reprimands him.

‘I wanna talk to him,’ Emma says promptly. She needs to find out after all what he saw and actually also why he crashed into Hook. The guy might be making a full recovery no problem, but he still nearly ran over Mr Gold and Belle and mowed down Captain Hook.

‘He’s waking up now,’ says Whale.

‘Already?’ Ruby stares at him.

‘I waited a couple of hours to tell you, in case he, you know, keeled over. But so far, so good.’

‘All right then,’ says Mary Margaret, all business, nodding at David.

‘Yeah, let’s talk to him.’

‘We’re not talking to him as a group,’ says Emma to them quickly, staring incredulously. She’d thought that much was obvious. ‘We’re not a group sheriff.’

Mary Margaret regards at her with a scandalised look on her face. ‘But we’ve been doing this together.’

‘We’re trying to convince this guy this place is normal. In a normal town the sheriff goes in and asks a few questions. She doesn’t bring her parents with her.’

Even if those parents look rather like they are her slightly older siblings than anything else, but never mind; the same rule applies to families.

‘That’s probably true,’ admits David.

Mary Margaret looks like Emma has hurt her deeply, which is not what she was trying to do at all. She has to understand she does things for them, not in order to push them away. Even if she has a hard time accepting them as her parents, they are still her friends; Mary Margaret is her best friend.

‘We’ll be right here then,’ says the other woman in a falsely sweet tone, her smile looking rather like a grimace.

Emma suppresses a sigh, hands Leroy her half-empty cup of coffee, and leaves.

*

The man holds up a teacup out in front of her. He’s much calmer than he has been before and at least he’s not trying to kiss her. A definite improvement to their previous encounter, but she still doesn’t know who he is. Sure she knows his name by now, but that’s it. She doesn’t know who _she_ is either, and that seems a more central information to unearth.

‘I know you don’t remember,’ he says in a pleading voice, ‘but just… indulge me. Please.’ He sounds like he’s a doddering old fool, something like her grandfather, even if he’s not.

He’s not that old, maybe in his early or mid-fifties. He could be her dad. For her lover he would be a bit too old, she guesses, but what would she know? She doesn’t know a thing. Not even her own name, just that it’s not, like he claims, Belle.

She takes the cup out of his hand to humour him and turns it around.

‘Be careful with it,’ he advises immediately, as though she could break it with her bare hands.

He holds up a placating hand, like he’s afraid she will start yelling again.

‘It’s a… it’s a cup,’ she explains in confusion. It’s… it’s damaged.’ There’s a nick clearly visible at the upper rim.

‘Just… look at it,’ he whispers in an intense voice, drawing a line from his forehead to the cup with his finger. ‘Focus.’ He taps an undamaged part of the rim. ‘It’s your talisman.’

She looks up at him. ‘It’s a cup,’ she repeats in case he didn’t hear her the first time.

‘You dropped it… in my castle,’ he says. ‘You were afraid you that you had angered me.’

He’s crazy, she thinks. A castle? Why would he have a castle, and more importantly why would she be in that castle? Why would she drop a cup and be afraid to anger this man? It sounded like straight out of a fairytale.

‘Okay, you, you need to go and take you cup.’ She tries to hand it back to him.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ Mr Gold says quickly. ‘I… I charmed it. If you focus, it _will_ work.’ She stares at him, willing him to stop talking such nonsense. What she had seen… back on the road after she had been shot… It was something from her imagination. She didn’t get shot at all, did she? ‘It’s magic.’

That’s enough for her.

‘Okay, just go away!’ she says angrily. ‘Stop talking about magic and take your cup.’

He doesn’t take it.

‘Just look at it,’ he urges.

She takes the cup into her hands and hurls it away from her. It smashes against the far wall.

The man is silently staring at the broken pieces. She hugs her knees. She feels like crying. Why can nobody treat her normally here? Where _is_ here?

He looks back at her with an expression as though she has just about destroyed his heart. She cannot be responsible for his wellbeing. He’s hurting her, even if maybe he doesn’t mean to.

‘Just go,’ she says in an unsteady voice. ‘Just go away.’

The man turns back towards the fragments and whispers, ‘I’m sorry.’

Then he shambles out of her room, leaving her alone. Not that she wants to be alone, but she’s afraid of this man. And she wants to get out, but where would she go? She doesn’t know anybody here, but she knows she should.

*

Emma enters the ward where Greg Mendell is staying. There’s nobody else in there, since Hook has a single room – though she likes to think of it as isolated custody – and Belle is in a ward upstairs. Not much is going in Storybrooke unless it’s high tide and even then the accident rates are rather lower than in, say, Boston or New York.

Greg Mendell sees her entering. He’s still lying down, which is understandable since he just woke up from surgery.

‘Nurse?’ he says in a weak and raspy voice.

Well, apparently all women in a hospital are nurses, no matter what they wear.

‘ _Sheriff_ Swan, actually,’ she informs him.

‘I’m thirsty,’ he whispers, fidgeting with his feet. He seems rather agitated, which probably is normal, but she doesn’t know. Waking up in a strange place after a traumatic accident might just make you nervous.

She picks up the plastic cup with a straw in it and hands it to him.

‘Here.’

He gets up with some difficulty and takes the cup with two hands. Emma holds up the plastic bag with his keys, wallet, and phone for him to see. She hopes it’s not too obvious she’s unlocked it. It’s not something a normal sheriff would do. She’s not really a cop and she certainly didn’t have a warrant. She may get away with something like that if it’s a Storybrooke resident or Hook, but not with someone from outside.

‘I have your personal effects. I’m just gonna put them here, okay?’ She places the bag on his side table.

After he’s finished drinking, he leans back exhausted.

‘So, Mr Mendell,’ she begins, using his silence to press on, despite feeling awkward. ‘I wanted to talk to you to you about the accident.’ Even her voice sounds like she’s apologising for something. That’s not the way to go if she doesn’t want to make him suspicious. Even if she also wants to know why she hell he would barrel into a pedestrian without braking. The road outside Storybrooke isn’t highly dangerous for the area, no unexpected curves or anything.

He stares up at her.

‘Did I hit somebody?’ he asks with genuine concern. It takes her aback for a moment. He doesn’t remember that? Her face must have betrayed the truth. ‘Oh my God, I hit someone. Is he okay?’

‘Hey, don’t worry about him,’ she says evasively. It seems a bit weird for a sheriff to be saying something like that about a crash victim. ‘I mean the… the damage was pretty minor,’ she amends, remembering Whale told her Hook had been extremely lucky, even miraculously so.

Greg Mendell turns his head towards the ceiling and exhales deeply. ‘Oh thank God.’

He might be the second person after herself to be really glad nothing worse has happened to the pirate. Is she glad? Yes, of course, just not exultant.

‘But I do need you to state what happened in your own words.’ She moves away from his bedside to stand at the foot of the bed. ‘What you did. What you _saw_.’

‘Well, I didn’t see anything,’ he says, looking around in flustered sort of way. ‘I…’

‘Well, you were driving,’ she reminds him persistently. He might have seen a leather-clad pirate standing in the middle of the road or maybe even a man on the ground about to throw a fireball…

‘Yeah, I mean…’ the man amends confused. ‘I saw the road, of course.’

He’s probably just hesitating because he really saw it. The magic and… well, Hook is also a sight to behold… She means his dress sense, of course, which would not put him out of place at a Hallowe’en party, but that is still conspicuously far off right now.

‘I just think,’ she says hastily, moving back around to his side again, ‘I might be able to put your mind at ease.’ He eyes her warily, and she really hopes she does not come off as totally crazy. She needs to figure out something, quickly. ‘There might be… an explanation if you… saw…’

‘I was texting!’ he says abruptly, as though trying to get it over with, completely throwing her off track.

‘Oh,’ is all Emma gets out right now. She crosses her arms.

‘I looked down, just for a second… and when I looked back up, he was right there. And he was too close to avoid. But I… I know that it’s not legal… in Maine.’

Well, he’s lucky then, that it was nobody else on the road.

‘It’s okay,’ she says, feeling lucky herself, that Greg Mendell broke Maine’s law, which means he really didn’t see anything, even if that was at the expense of someone’s health. ‘I’m just glad that you… were honest with me.’

‘So, no charges?’ he asks hopefully.

‘No, no charges.’ She walks back to the foot of the bed. ‘I’ll let you go with a warning this time.’

Unless Hook wants to press charges, and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t even know what they are or has in fact knowledge of any rights he has at all. Let’s better keep him in the dark for now. After all Greg Mendell leaving Storybrooke as soon as possible is the priority. When she arrests Hook, she can still read him his rights, not that she expects him to understand them at any rate.

‘Oh, thank you,’ Greg Mendell breathes. A pretty grateful guy this one, she thinks almost amused. ‘So, when… when can I head home?’

‘As soon as the doctor clears you,’ she says, nearly shrugging. ‘We don’t wanna keep you.’

She smiles at him, hoping her own relief doesn’t show as clearly on her face as it does on his, and hastily leaves the room to inform the others about this happy turn of events. Then they can finally put this whole ordeal behind them. What time is it? Seven? Eight? Has she really not slept all night? She needs to go home pronto and get her well-deserved rest.

*

He carries the milky white globe out into the shop where the light is better. In the wee hours he doesn’t expect to get any surprise visitors who don’t already know about the globe, even if Storybrooke residents are notoriously wont to ignore his closed sign, but the door is magically sealed at any rate. The globe is surprisingly heavy, despite its fragile appearance. It isn’t after all merely something like a huge white bauble or a hollow globe. The magic inside it, Rumple reasons, is what makes it so heavy.

He places the globe on the counter. The spike at the top of the bow, which holds the globe in place, is pretty sharp. Rumple lowers his forefinger onto it and lets it prick him so deeply that blood is running down the thorn as he removes his finger. A magic user is much less worried about injuries, an immortal magician doesn’t need to worry about them at all.

He lets one scarlet drop fall onto the white surface. The blood spreads thin across the globe, wafting like crimson clouds, forming gradually a map of the world. An area at the east coast of North America is marked in a deeper shade of red than the rest. Rumple smiles when he realises it’s not far from Storybrooke.

‘Bae.’

*

Henry wakes up when he hears voices from downstairs. He had tried to stay awake for most of the night, wondering when his family would come back. Sometime during the night Emma, David and Mary Margaret had left the apartment in a hurry. They had sent Granny over to look after him.

He hurries down the stairs in his pajamas, despite being very tired. He’s glad today is Saturday, otherwise it would be a very long day. His mom and grandparents look more tired than he does though. He thinks they didn’t sleep at all.

‘You were out _all night_. Where were you?’ he asks almost accusingly. ‘Granny wouldn’t tell me anything. Did I miss it all?’

Emma looks at him and puts her hand on his shoulder apparently about to tell him something, but David cuts across her from the kitchen area.

‘Cereal okay?’ he asks her holding up a bowl for her.

‘Yeah,’ says Emma and pushes Henry to join her to sit at the raised counter.

‘Rumplestiltskin and Captain Hook had a fight and someone got hurt.’

Henry loves hearing these stories. They sound like stories, but what makes them even better is they’re real. Captain Hook is real! He feels giddily excited about the news, even though, of course, Emma and Archie had told him about him before, but now it is really confirmed he is here in Storybrooke. A much cooler character than Peter Pan in Henry’s opinion, because Captain Hook had a code while Peter Pan was just sort of selfish sometimes. Maybe he could get to meet the pirate… though, of course, he seems a bit dangerous and scary, but scary can be interesting, too, and dangerous even more so. But Emma would protect him if something bad was about to happen, like she always does.

‘We weren’t sure if Doctor Frankenstein could fix him, but he did,’ Emma explains earnestly.

‘Doctor…?’ repeats Henry, wondering for a moment, but then he gets it right away. ‘Oh, _that’s_ who Whale is.’ He smiles happily. It makes sense that Doctor Frankenstein would be a doctor in Storybrooke, too. He wonders what fairytale he’s from…

‘Yeah,’ says Emma again. ‘But without the neck bolts.’

‘The monster had the bolts, not the Doctor,’ Henry corrects her.

‘Right, but either way. Some of us having known him,’ Emma looks over at Mary Margaret, ‘it’s weird.’

‘It’s not weird,’ replies Mary Margaret. ‘We’re past it. We were cursed.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asks Henry.

‘Nothing,’ David answers pointedly, and Henry just knows there are talking about something they don’t wanna tell him.

‘Wait,’ says Henry.

‘Really, it’s nothing,’ Mary Margaret confirms in a breathy panicky voice, but Henry doesn’t even pay attention to them anymore.

He jumps off his stool and runs over to the place where the book is. He remembers who wrote Frankstein and it doesn’t exactly fit in with the other stories. It seems like a different world, too. He leaves through the book to confirm what he already knows, then returns to join his family at the table.

‘Frankenstein isn’t in here,’ he informs them excitedly. ‘It’s not even a fairytale.’ He sits down on the stool again and puts the book down in front of himself. ‘That means he comes from another land with… different stories.’

Emma puts his bowl of cereal on top of the book.

‘Eat,’ she says with her mouth full. ‘I really want to go to bed.’

‘If the curse went to places with other stories,’ Henry continues undeterred. He can see his mom put her head down on the tabletop as though she is going to sleep right there, ‘then who knows who else is in this town?’

A knock on the door wakes Emma from her drowsy stupor. She gulps down her cereal and turns around, but before she can answer, the door opens, and Mr Gold comes in. They really should just keep the door bolted shut when everyone is inside. That way they can keep out unwanted visitors. Unfortunately Mr Gold would be able to open the door anyway.

‘Gold,’ says Emma. ‘We’ve all had a long night.’

She knows that Gold never likes to listen to reason if he wants something. And he doesn’t look like he’s had such a long night.

‘You remember that favour you owe me, Miss Swan?’ the man asks without reacting to her half-hearted protest, just as she expected.

‘Yeah,’ Emma replies warily.

‘I’m cashing it in.’

She can hear David walking over to stand behind her for support.

‘It’s not a good…’ she begins, feeling slightly intimidated. A feeling only Mr Gold manages to stir inside her so far.

‘You do _honour_ your agreements, don’t you?’ he interrupts her.

She hopes that David will not do something noble to defend her. She doesn’t want him to get hurt and from what she witnessed Mr Gold doing so far and especially last night, she imagines there is no boundary he isn’t prepared to cross.

Emma doesn’t say anything. She will not in a million years not honour the agreement because it would mean that Ashley loses  Alexandra,  her baby daughter, after all. She cannot be responsible for that. Now Henry has joined them, too, to stand at her side. She can see Mr Gold looking down at him with as much contempt as he does with everyone else.

‘I need to find someone,’ he continues. ‘So, we’re leaving today. Pack your bag.’

‘Leaving?’ repeats Mary Margaret.

‘W… where?’ asks Henry.

‘Wait,’ says Emma slowly. ‘Find someone? Who?’

‘My son,’ Gold explains. ‘It has to be today, because every minute I’m here, is a minute closer to me killing Hook.’ As he says this he looks Emma directly in the eyes.

There is a sudden painful contraction in her chest, like shock, and for a moment the floor seems to have vanished from underneath her feet.

‘So, it’s really best for all concerned if I leave, and you’re gonna come with me.’

Emma feels a rage inside her now, she has not felt for quite some time, not since Regina stopped riling her up so much. Maybe never and she can’t even place why she feels that way. She just knows she’s incredibly angry at Mr Gold.

‘Oh, and, um,’ he continues as though he can see it in her eyes. He points at everyone assembled in turn, ‘we have a long history. So, know this, and know it to be true. If any harm comes to Belle while I’m gone, I’m killing all of you.’ His sweeping hand gesture envelopes everyone, even Henry who presses himself against her in fear. It does nothing to alleviate her anger, but it doesn’t change anything. She needs to do this, for Ashley and Alexandra, Henry, Mary Margaret, and David, even for Hook.

‘I’ll see you at noon.’

Mr Gold turns and exits through the door, leaving an enraged, anxious, and confused Emma behind.

*

As soon as Sheriff Swan has left his ward, Greg Mendell scrambles for his possessions and pulls his cell out of the little plastic bag, which gives the slight impression like he’s in prison not in a hospital. What disconcerts him for a moment is that the phone looks as if someone had been using it recently. He doesn’t think he had been looking at his pictures before the crash. He hadn’t been texting either, and that Sheriff Swan didn’t realise it is good, since she was probably the one who hacked into his phone.

It doesn’t matter. There is nothing on here that would incriminate him. He looks over his shoulder to make sure he is alone. The important thing is that he has to phone Tamara now. As he expected there are like a million unanswered calls from her. He scrolls through them, then taps her name to call her back.

 _‘Greg?’_ he hears her voice and feels a little bit better, even though she sounds a little hysterical. He isn’t alone in the world anymore.

‘Honey.’ Immediately he is almost drowned in a tirade about how he cannot _not_ call her for almost twelve hours. ‘I kn… I know,’ he says. ‘Just wait… wait. Just listen… just listen, okay? … Yes, I’m okay. I was in an accident.’ She is quiet now, even though she is bound to be worried.

‘Honey,’ Greg Mendell continues and looks over his shoulder once again, trying to keep the hospital staff in his sight. ‘You’re not gonna believe what I saw.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope it was worth the wait and you could enjoy it!
> 
> The title is, of course, a reference to the Jell-O scene, as well as the author of Doctor Frankenstein. Three sheets refers to Dr Whale being drunk, as well as Hook before the crash, but I mostly added it for its sound.
> 
> I imagine Hook would be traumatised by the accident, so I had him reliving the crash several times over in his head.  
> The second part from his perspective might be somewhat confusing or disorientating, which is a bit of on purpose to relay some of the feelings Hook has at these moments.  
> The first part from his perspective is the actual crash, where he passes out as soon as the crash happens, and later wakes up and becomes unconscious again before Emma and the rest arrives.  
> The next one is him passed out later in the back of the ambulance (I think he passed out before he was wheeled into the ambulance) reliving the crash. Then he wakes up and panics because he doesn't know where he is and he has never been in a car before. He gets injected with something againt the pain, but doesn't realise it and puts the absence of pain down to either dying, going crazy, or dreaming. He relives the crash again and passes out. In the hospital he hears Emma talking about hiding him, but he doesn't believe it to be true. Also the pain meds have stopped working again. He becomes more aware in the bed, but sees the car coming towards him again, and then wakes up completely and sees Emma sitting by his bed.  
> I hope I could help you a little bit with this, otherwise I might just have confused you a little bit more.
> 
> At any rate, thanks very much for reading and even more so for your patience in case you have been waiting.  
> Happy Hallowe'en and until next time, take care!


End file.
